Do You Recall, Long Ago
by JessieJay13
Summary: It was bad enough that Merlin woke up in a field out of town missing months' worth of his memories, but it was worse coming back to find his best friend couldn't stand him anymore and no one knew why. Reconciling with Arthur would be easier if things were simple, but things in his life rarely are. Regaining his memories only makes things more difficult - and more dangerous.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I'm back with a new Merlin fic! This one was part of the After Camlann Big Bang fic fest on livejournal and has some really beautiful art to accompany it which I cannot link to here because this website is dumb sometimes. So if you'd like to check out the art, this same story is cross-posted to my AO3 account clotpolesonly, same title and whatnot, so you take a look there.**

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"You can probably skip most of this unit," Gwen said, leaning close conspiratorially despite the fact that they were the only ones left in the library. "Honestly, there were maybe three questions from it on the last exam. It's the next unit that you really need to pay attention to. That one's short but it's tricky." She smiled at him, tapping her pencil's eraser on the table. "Shouldn't take you long to pick up on, though. At least, you didn't seem to have any trouble with it the last time you learned it."

"That's reassuring," Merlin said with only the slightest hint of sarcasm. He snapped the book closed and leaned his chair back on its hind legs, rubbing at his tired eyes. "I'd have even less trouble if I didn't have to learn it all _again_. Five months of schoolwork: gone!"

"Well, technically the work is all still done," Gwen said. "You've already turned in all the assignments and the teachers said you don't have to do them again."

"That doesn't help me on exams if I don't remember _doing_ any of it in the first place," Merlin grumbled, letting the front legs of his chair crash back onto the floor. "Losing your memory is bad enough without losing half your A level prep along with it."

"You'll catch up," Gwen said encouragingly. "No one blames you for being a bit behind! The situation isn't exactly something that's in your control. You'll be fine, though. I know you will."

Merlin gave her a weak smile. "Thanks for doing all this," he said, waving a hand at the array of books and papers spread out across the library table—all of Gwen's biology notes from the last five months, necessary because Merlin's own notes were useless chicken scratch at the best of times and they both knew it. "I know it's a hassle."

"You could never be a hassle, Merlin," she said, chiding. "But I do think that's enough for one day. You're only a week out of hospital and you shouldn't strain yourself."

"The doctors gave me a clean bill of health," he reminded her as he started stuffing papers back into his bag anyway. "I'm perfectly fine. Except for the whole 'not remembering anything past November' thing, of course."

"And they really don't have any idea what caused it?"

Merlin stood up and hefted his bag. "No, not really. They're assuming it's some sort of fugue state resulting from repression of a traumatic event," he said with a roll of his eyes, "but they don't sound very convinced when they say that, and if there was a traumatic event, then I certainly don't remember it."

"You don't remember much of anything," Gwen reminded him, shouldering her bag as well and leading the way out.

Merlin shrugged and followed her out. He didn't mention the scars on his chest that certainly hadn't been there when last he remembered. There were a number of marks on his skin that he'd never seen before, but all of them were long since healed. He hadn't been missing for more than a few hours before he'd been found, so the doctors hadn't asked anything about them and Merlin hadn't volunteered the information. Those marks could have come from any number of things, really. They were no reason to worry.

"What have the police turned up?" Gwen asked.

"Nothing," Merlin said with a sigh. "When they found me, I was alone and uninjured. I think they've given up on finding any real hint of foul play. There's no evidence of anything at all."

"They really ought to keep looking," Gwen said with a frown, "especially if the doctors think—"

The door at the far end of the corridor burst open and a gaggle of rowdy boys spilled in from outside, whooping and laughing, all still in their football kits and tromping dirt in with them. Arthur was the last in, chatting with Percy, the grass-stained ball tucked under his arm. The smile dropped off his face when he caught sight of Merlin and Gwen down the hallway. He looked away quickly and Merlin's stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch.

"You still haven't talked to him?" Gwen asked with an odd mixture of sympathy and exasperation.

"Why would I?"

"Because he's your best friend and this is stupid!"

"No, he _was_ my best friend," Merlin corrected her, his eyes on Arthur as he and his teammates headed for the locker room. "Not anymore."

"But you don't even know why," Gwen said. "Losing your best friend is one thing, but how can you stand not even knowing how it happened? _I_ can't stand not knowing, and I wasn't even a part of it."

"Just leave it, Gwen," Merlin snapped. "According to you lot, we haven't had anything to do with each other in two months. If he doesn't want to associate with me anymore, then that's fine and I won't make him. Does it even matter why?"

"Of course it matters." Gwen looked at him for a long moment and then sighed. "You'll have to talk to him eventually," she said, her curls bouncing around her face as she shook her head. "You can't go on like this forever. You two were too close for that."

"I've got to get something from my locker," Merlin said, pulling his backpack around to fiddle with the front pocket to avoid meeting her eye. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Gwen squeezed his arm and gave him a sad smile that he didn't return. Then she left him alone, heading for the end of the corridor and the carpark beyond. Merlin went the other way, digging the little slip of paper with his locker combination out of his pocket—apparently he had changed it sometime in the last five months. Lucky he had told Gwen the new combo or they would have had to cut the lock off to get inside. If only he had told her everything else, like what had happened between him and Arthur.

The halls were empty this late on a Tuesday afternoon and Merlin's footsteps echoed off the linoleum floors. It was a lonely sound, or maybe Merlin was just projecting. It wasn't that he didn't have a support system—he had his mother, of course, and plenty of people had come to see him when he'd first been in hospital—but none of that seemed to matter in the face of all that he had lost.

He was missing five months of his life, all of it just gone as if someone had scooped a chunk of his brain out with a melon-baller and left behind a gaping hole in its place. He felt like he had been transported into the future, and everything was the same and yet different all at once, just enough to be jarring. His locker had a new lock and there was a pencil case in it that he didn't remember buying. He had no idea what was going on in any of his classes. He didn't even know his own _skin_ anymore.

And Arthur hated him.

That was the worst of it. He had woken up in an open field just outside the city with no idea how he'd gotten there, been taken to a hospital, been poked and prodded and interrogated by doctors and police alike, and he had looked at all the cards on his bedside table and all the signatures in the visitors log and wondered why none of them were from his best friend. Three days in hospital and sixteen people had come to see him, but not the boy who had been by his side nearly every day for the last seven years, and no one could tell him why. Not his mother, not Gwen, not even Morgana.

All anyone could say was that one day two months ago, he and Arthur had stopped talking. Just like that, with no explanation to anyone. And now even _Merlin_ had no idea what had happened. The only person who knew was Arthur, and he wanted nothing to do with Merlin anymore.

The locker room door banged open and Merlin jumped. The football team, no longer in uniform, filed out and headed for the exit. A few of them stopped to greet Merlin as they passed with smiles and nods and the occasional slap on the back. Arthur didn't so much as glance in his direction, even as he passed within arm's reach. Gwaine gave Merlin an apologetic but also rather pitying look, thumbing over his shoulder at Arthur and shrugging as if to say "what can you do?"

A flare of anger caught Merlin by surprise, hotter and brighter and more vivid than anything he had felt in the last week and a half. He slammed the door to his locker shut with a resounding _clang_ and called out, "Arthur!"

The whole team stopped, stunned. According to Gwen, his and Arthur's fallout had been big news around the school. They had been inseparable since the day they arrived, everyone knew that, and their sudden split had fueled the rumor mill for weeks because neither of them would confirm the cause. Even Arthur's footie mates were invested in the drama and every one of them was staring now, looking between them with obvious interest. One look from their captain sent them scurrying out the door, though, and Merlin and Arthur were left alone in the empty hallway.

Arthur didn't say anything, didn't even turn to face him properly, and Merlin had a very strong urge to punch a wall. He just barely resisted the violent impulse, instead saying, "What the hell happened to us?"

"I don't have time for this," Arthur mumbled, and he turned to leave.

"Don't you dare," Merlin said, dropping his bag and stalking toward him. "Don't you _dare_ walk away without giving me any sort of explanation. You owe me that much, at least."

"I don't owe you anything!" Arthur snapped. "Not after—" He stopped short.

"After what?" Merlin demanded. "After _what_ , Arthur? What could possibly have happened to destroy us like this?"

Arthur sneered at him, a cold, haughty look that Merlin hadn't seen on his face in years. "Can you really think of nothing?"

Merlin raised his arms wide and then let them fall, at a loss. "I don't remember anything," he said. "That's sort of the problem."

Arthur let out a bitter laugh. "Oh no, the problem is much older than that."

Merlin stared. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"See, it doesn't even _occur_ to you!" Arthur burst out, throwing down his pack as well so that he could jab a finger at Merlin. "It doesn't even cross your mind that you could have done—could _still_ be doing—something that might upset me."

It hit Merlin all at once and he stumbled back, that sick feeling coming back tenfold. Arthur nodded, a tight-lipped smile on his face now.

"Ah," he said, a mockery of dawning comprehension. "Now you get it."

"How—" Merlin tried to ask, but his voice came out as a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "How did you find out?"

"You certainly didn't tell me," Arthur said bitterly.

"How could I?" Merlin shot back, feeling off-balance and more vulnerable than he could ever remembering feeling, even when he had stood alone and panicked in a place he'd never seen before with five months of his life gone—even when he had begun to suspect that the memory loss wasn't of natural causes at all. "It's not exactly something that you just blurt out to people, not unless you're hoping to get arrested."

"No, but it's certainly something you should tell your—" Arthur stopped abruptly and rubbed a hand over his face. "Look," he said. "I've already had this argument and I'm—"

"Well, I haven't!"

"—I am _not_ up for having it again," Arthur said, more forcefully this time, as he turned his back on Merlin.

"Wait!" Merlin called out, not sure now if he was angry or desperate and rushing to grab Arthur by the arm. The harsh way that Arthur jerked out of his hold, as if he couldn't bear for Merlin to touch him anymore, made Merlin throw his hands up in the air in frustration. "Please, just—how can we fix this if we don't talk about it?"

"We've _tried_ talking about it," Arthur said, incredulous. "Don't you think we _tried_? But you can't just _fix this_ , Merlin. You lied to me for our entire— And you never saw fit to trust me with something so important—"

"Something so _illegal_ , you mean," Merlin hissed. "Something that could get me killed."

"Jesus _Christ_ , Merlin, that you would even _think_ that I would—"

"I never said that you—"

"And to think I had to find out by overhearing you and Mordred, of all people, chatting about your favorite grimoire shop," Arthur scoffed. "As if that's a safe topic to discuss on school grounds where bloody anyone could overhear."

That gave Merlin pause as the hole in his mind twinged like an old wound. "Wait, Mordred?" he asked. Merlin hadn't even known that Mordred _had_ magic. In fact, he couldn't remember ever having spoken to Mordred at all, he wasn't even in their year. He shook his head, straining to remember something, _anything_. "And I don't have a grimoire. I've never had anything like that."

"Apparently you do now," Arthur said. "Don't ask me where it is or how you got it, because you didn't see fit to inform me." He turned to leave again, but Merlin hardly noticed.

A burst of pain in Merlin's temple wrenched a cry from his lips and the hallway tilted alarmingly around him, or maybe he was the one tilting. His vision greyed around the edges, blurring, and his ears suddenly felt like they'd been stuffed with cotton. He vaguely heard Arthur say his name before his vision was overcome entirely.

 _An ancient book, the ornate cover dusty and tattered, was placed gently in Merlin's outstretched hands. He could feel the thrum of magic against his palms, unlike anything he had ever felt before. He traced his fingers over the embossed title with something close to reverence. The shapes of the symbols were unfamiliar but, if he looked hard, he felt like they almost made sense._

 _He looked up at the man in front of him and shook his head, saying, "I couldn't possibly take this."_

 _The man was tall and slim, his curly blond hair tucked behind his ears. His smile reached all the way to his slanted eyes._

" _We want you to have it," he said._

 _Merlin looked down at the book again, marveling. "But why?" he asked. "Alvarr, this is a beautiful artefact. It's got to be valuable! You can't just give it away to some random kid."_

 _Alvarr chuckled. "Trust me, Merlin, you're far from random." He put a hand on the book's cover and Merlin felt the magic in it spike. Alvarr nodded, as if he knew exactly what Merlin had sensed. "No, you're very special. And I wouldn't give this tome to anyone else."_

" _Why?" Merlin asked again._

" _Honestly?" Alvarr shrugged. "It's of no_ use _to anyone else."_

 _Merlin frowned, confused._

 _Alvarr gestured behind him and Merlin looked over the rows of long linoleum tables on their rickety legs. There were a smattering of other kids his age there, many of them studying other books with indecipherable titles, others chatting with older men and women. In the back of the large room there were bursts of light, things moving independently, people with their hands raised before them and eyes glowing bright. Merlin couldn't help but smile at the sight, as he had done every time he'd been blessed with it._

" _This grimoire is powerful," Alvarr said, drawing his attention back. "More powerful than the average sorcerer can handle." He tapped it. "This wouldn't do me a damn bit of good, nor any of them back there. But_ you _. You're special, Merlin."_

 _Merlin stood taller, clutching the precious book against his chest. "You really think I could manage it?" he asked, breathless._

" _I think you can achieve anything you put your mind to." Alvarr winked. "If you just stick with us."_

The school hallway returned just as abruptly as it had disappeared, one moment gone and the next there again, but it was more of a shock to see it all from a new angle. Merlin was no longer standing in the middle of the corridor, but rather sitting with his back pressed against the wall. Arthur was crouched down beside him with a hand on his shoulder but his eyes were sweeping the hall, almost like he was keeping watch.

Arthur glanced back, saw that Merlin was looking at him, and he let out a gusty sigh of relief.

"Merlin!" he said. "What the hell just happened?"

The loudness of Arthur's voice and its proximity were like jackhammers and Merlin's head throbbed. He gasped, reaching up as if he could somehow hold his skull together with his hands. Arthur tried to pull them away.

"Merlin?" he asked, more quietly this time but with more concern. "Merlin, what is it? Should I call a doctor? They said you were fine, but if—"

Merlin shook his head, which only made it worse. "No," he gasped out. "No, can't tell them. Can't tell them anything."

"Why? Merlin, why can't you tell them? What's going on?"

"I don't know!" Merlin shouted, shoving Arthur away with all his might and sending him sprawling across the dirty floor. "I don't fucking _know_ what's going on! I don't know _anything_! I don't know what just happened, or how I got in that bloody field, or where these fucking scars came from, or—or Mordred, or grimoires, or why someone would take my memories away from me! I just don't know, I don't—"

Merlin's outburst caught up with him, his head protesting fiercely enough that he wondered if he might be sick. He curled in on himself, pulling his knees to his chest and hiding his face in them so that Arthur wouldn't see the tears in his eyes. It wasn't that Arthur hadn't seen him cry before, but things were different now. They weren't friends anymore. They weren't anything, and fuck if that didn't make everything ten times worse.

Arthur tried to put a hand on his shoulder but Merlin flinched away. He didn't try again, but he didn't leave either. Merlin wasn't sure if he was relieved or angry that he was still there, but he didn't have the energy to spare for expressing either emotion at the moment, so he just focused on getting his breathing under control and forcing the tears to stop before they got out of hand.

After what seemed like an eternity, Arthur cleared his throat. Twice. Merlin almost managed a laugh—that was such an _Arthur_ thing, a nervous tick he'd had for as long as Merlin had known him—but he just ended up with a sort of hiccoughy sob.

"Scars?" was what Arthur finally came out with.

Merlin stiffened; he hadn't meant to say that. He hadn't meant to say any of it, really, but he was just so damn tired of not saying anything at all, and he was hurting and scared and it was _Arthur_ , his best friend. Arthur, who was kneeling in front of him now, hair askew and dust on his jacket and that crease between his eyebrows that only ever showed up when he was really worried.

Merlin sniffed and wiped his wet face with his jacket sleeve. "'S nothing," he mumbled.

"Nothing doesn't leave scars."

"It's fine, they're all healed," Merlin insisted. Then he shifted, pulling his own jacket tighter around his middle, the back of his hand brushing over the largest of the mysterious injuries. "I just…don't know how I got them, is all."

Arthur's hands curled into fists where they rested on his knees. He looked like he wanted to reach out, but he didn't. Instead he bit his lip and looked around again, up and down the corridor, before leaning in closer.

"You said…you said someone _took_ your memories."

Merlin bit back a curse. He definitely hadn't meant to say _that_ bit out loud. He had barely even acknowledged the suspicion to himself, let alone admitted it to someone else, not even his mother. But he had said it now, and Arthur was looking at him like it mattered, like he still cared, like they hadn't apparently spent the last two months at each other's throats. Merlin rubbed at his eyes, gritty and hot from crying.

"I don't know," he said for what felt like the millionth time. "It's just…the doctors don't really know what caused the amnesia. They keep saying things, but it's so obvious that they're just guessing, and I can't help but feel like this isn't… _natural_. I think it was—"

He stopped, the word perched on his tongue and stuck there. In all this time, all the shouting and arguing about it, they had yet to actually say the word. It felt like the sound of it might shatter the fragile truce that had Arthur still here with him, like it would send him running, and Merlin didn't think he could bear that.

Arthur took the dive for him. He put a hand on Merlin's knee and said, "You think it was magic?"

Merlin's heart skipped a beat and he couldn't stop himself from scanning their surroundings to make sure that no one was around, that no one had overheard. When he had reassured himself that they were completely alone, he nodded. He rubbed at his forehead—at least the headache was starting to subside and he didn't feel like his brain was going to melt out of his ears anymore, so that was something.

"It's just a feeling," he said. "But my feelings are usually pretty reliable where this stuff is concerned."

Arthur looked at him, his face inscrutable. There had been a time—a very recent time, as far as Merlin could remember—when Arthur had been an open book to him, when he could read every thought that went through his head with a single glance, but it seemed that sometime in the last five months, Arthur had learned to modulate his expressions better. Merlin saw it, though, when Arthur noticed that he still had his hand on Merlin's knee. Arthur snatched it off like he'd been burned and stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets instead. Merlin tried not to feel too stung.

"But who would do that?" Arthur asked, not acknowledging his strange reaction. "And why?"

Merlin shrugged, unwilling to say it even one more time. He let his head fall back against the wall with a clunk. After a long moment of quiet broken only by the sound of Arthur's fidgeting, he felt the warmth along his shoulder that meant Arthur had sat down beside him against the wall. It was a position they'd taken up too many times to count over the course of their friendship and the familiarity of it was a comfort, even if the distance between them was palpable.

"Your eyes were glowing," Arthur said. His voice was almost a whisper, but the damning words seemed to echo off the lockers anyway.

"When?" Merlin asked, confused.

"Earlier," he said. "When you—" He made a vague, swirling sort of gesture in the air. "I don't know what you did."

"I didn't do anything."

"Then what was it?" Arthur asked. "The gold eyes is a sign of magic being performed, everyone knows that."

Merlin shook his head. "I wasn't doing anything," he protested. "But I did _see_ something."

"See something?" Arthur repeated, frowning. "What, like a vision?"

"No, not exactly." Merlin rubbed his right thumb over his left palm, feeling the phantom tingle of a magic he didn't remember encountering. Or maybe he did. "I think it was a memory."


	2. Chapter 2

Merlin frowned down at Gwen's neat handwriting, rows and rows of names and dates that he used to know and were now utterly foreign. He dutifully copied them down in his own untidy scrawl, barely registering any of them as he passed them by. Before he'd even reached the bottom of the first page, Gwen was pushing another one toward him with an apologetic grimace. He made a face back at her but added the new sheet to his stack anyway. It was three inches tall and growing.

An ache was blooming in his left temple and it had only been ten minutes. He rubbed at his forehead with a sigh. A stifled noise of surprise from Gwen got his attention, though, and he looked up and followed her sightline. Arthur was hovering by their table, half-turned away as if he weren't sure whether or not to keep on walking and holding tightly to the strap of his backpack. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet as they both stared at him, then cleared his throat.

"Is your head bothering you?" he asked.

Merlin bit his lip, very aware of Gwen looking between them both with wide, shocked eyes. He was even more aware of exactly what Arthur meant, and the fact that he couldn't speak plainly in front of Gwen. He scratched the back of his head and said, "No. No, I'm fine. Just a lot of reading, is all."

"Arthur, why don't you sit with us?" Gwen suggested brightly, never one to miss out on an opportunity, already shifting bags and books to make room for him. "We're trying to get Merlin caught up in history, and that's always been more _your_ subject than mine. I bet your notes will be much more useful."

Arthur opened his mouth like he might protest, but Gwen was suddenly standing up and swinging her bag—when had she snatched all her notes off the table anyway?—over her shoulder.

"Oh, I see Lance over there!" she said with a sunny smile, putting hands on Arthur's shoulders and physically pushing him in Merlin's direction despite his considerable resistance, making him stumble a bit. "He was going to take me out after school and the day's almost over anyway, so if you can help Merlin then I'll just head out a bit early. I love having study period last thing! Play nice, boys."

Before either of them could get a word out, she had kissed Merlin's head and Arthur's cheek, just like she always used to, and then she was off and out the door. Merlin and Arthur exchanged rather shell-shocked looks, feeling a little blindsided by the whirlwind that Gwen became whenever she wanted to _help_. Merlin's disorientation wasn't helped by the fact that he kept forgetting that Gwen and Lance were actually together now; last he remembered, they had been a mess of pining and miscommunication with no hope in sight. Now they were well-established and known for being the happiest and most perfect couple in the whole school. Merlin had missed a lot.

Arthur was still standing there, the hand on his backpack strap clenching and unclenching. Merlin quickly buried his face in his notes, waiting for the sound of Arthur's retreating footsteps. After all, a few minutes of civility after a fight and an emotional breakdown didn't mean that anything was resolved between them. Arthur had been very clear on where he stood, and Merlin would just have to accept how badly he had fucked up everything between them.

He didn't expect the scrape of chair legs as Arthur sat down beside him and dumped his things out on the table. He didn't look up at Merlin, though he had to feel the eyes on him. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders tense, but he wasn't leaving.

"So your head's really alright?" Arthur asked, his voice low. "You weren't just saying that because Gwen was there?"

Merlin shrugged, at a bit of a loss with what was currently happening. "It does a hurt a bit," he admitted, "but nothing like yesterday. Just a garden variety headache."

Arthur shoved a stack of notes across the table to him, again without looking up, and pulled out a sheet of paper for himself, immediately setting about drawing the geometric patterns that constituted doodling for him. "So you haven't… _seen_ anything else?"

Merlin shook his head even though Arthur couldn't see it, avoiding looking at him as he was. He had barely slept the night before, half afraid he would have another episode and half hoping that he would, but he had made it through without even a glimpse of anything unusual. He tapped his pencil eraser against the table in a sharp staccato rhythm and said, "Not a thing."

Arthur had stopped drawing and was frowning at him.

Merlin frowned back. "What?"

"You've been bouncing your leg nonstop since before I walked up," Arthur said. "And now you're tapping incessantly. You never do stuff like that. What's up?"

Merlin stopped the tapping, but couldn't seem to make his leg still. "Nothing's up."

Arthur rolled his eyes, throwing down his pen. "You're twitchy and jumpy, Merlin," he said, impatient. "Something's definitely up. What is it?"

"Nothing's—"

" _Mer_ lin." Arthur's frown became an outright scowl, something harsh and accusatory.

Merlin looked away, heat rising in his face from either annoyance or shame, he wasn't quite sure. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Force of habit."

Arthur gave a huff and shook his head, like he was disgusted that Merlin was so accustomed to lying but also wasn't surprised by it. Merlin gritted his teeth so hard they squeaked and tried to focus back on the history notes in front of him, but he couldn't make the words focus properly.

Arthur kicked him under the table. Merlin looked up, intending to give him the most disparaging look he could manage, but Arthur was raising an expectant eyebrow at him, all but demanding an answer to his previous question. Arthur might hate his guts now, but apparently he wasn't going to let Merlin get away with keeping secrets from him anymore. Merlin sighed and looked around the library to make sure that none of the other tables were close enough for their occupants to overhear.

"My magic," he said, stumbling over the word he so rarely said out loud. "It's…weird."

"Weird?"

"Strong."

Arthur gave him a faux commiserating look. "That does sound weird," he agreed, his tone faintly mocking.

Merlin kicked him back, hard. "That's not the weird part, you twat!" he protested. "I mean that it's stronger than I remember it being. By a lot."

Arthur turned back to his paper, obviously discomfited by the topic, and started scratching away in the margins again.

"Is that a bad thing?" Arthur asked haltingly, as if he didn't think that having magic was a bad thing in and of itself. As if Merlin having magic hadn't already destroyed everything they had had together.

Merlin tossed down his pencil, rubbing his palms along his thighs instead. They were warm, tingly, and his leg was still bouncing.

"Not _bad_ so much as—" He hesitated, unsure how to phrase it so that it didn't sound quite as bad as it did in his head. "My magic has always been pretty strong," he said, almost whispering. "It's always been a matter of controlling it for me, whereas most people have to work at it and coax it out. I trained for years to get a handle on my power, and now suddenly there's _more_ of it. I'm just not used to this much."

"Not used to this much?" Arthur parroted back at him. "You mean you can't control it anymore?" He looked almost alarmed, leaning away from Merlin as if he might explode at any moment.

"No!" Merlin said, louder than was probably advisable in current surroundings. He got a quelling look from the librarian and huffed in annoyance, leaning in closer. "No, that's not—I just have to concentrate on it more, that's all. I didn't have to think about it before, it was just automatic. Now it's a constant itch. I haven't had to think about it this much since I was maybe eight years old, before I really started training."

Arthur ran his thumbnail over his eyebrow, another nervous tick, but he didn't look like he was searching for an escape route anymore. "Well, who trained you then?" he asked. "Could you call them up, see if they can help you now?"

Merlin chewed on the inside of his cheek. "I'd rather not, if it's all the same," he said. "Besides, Gaius doesn't even live here anymore, he moved back up north last year, remember?"

"Gaius?" Arthur asked, surprised. "Your great-uncle, Gaius? That's who taught you magic?"

"Yeah. He moved down here to help my mother raise me when my magic started causing problems for us," Merlin told him. "But we, er…we had a bit of a disagreement on the subject a while back and it was decided that he had taught me everything he could."

Merlin's pencil squeaked in protest at how tightly he was holding it, threatening to snap. The argument may have been old news chronologically speaking, but it still felt fresh to him. All of Gaius' insistences that he be _careful_ , that he be _discreet_ , that he keep his head down and his nose clean, still grated on him. The way Gaius wanted him to live was hardly living at all, completely denying the very core of who he was. Pretending he didn't have magic at all may have worked for Gaius but it didn't work for Merlin, and Gaius had point blank refused to take his training past the very basics he needed to keep from giving himself away.

"Still, maybe you could just call him and see what he has to say—"

"I'm handling it, Arthur," Merlin said, more sharply than he'd intended. "I've got it under control."

The startled, offended look on Arthur's face almost made Merlin feel guilty, but honestly, Arthur didn't know what he was talking about. He knew nothing about magic, and he knew nothing about _Merlin's_ magic. He had no right to interfere. But then Merlin remembered _why_ Arthur knew nothing about his magic—namely because Merlin had kept it from him—and the guilt tried to creep back in. He gentled his tone a bit; Arthur was still there, after all, and he had kept Merlin's secret for the last two months. Even when he was furious with Merlin, Arthur hadn't turned him in or told anyone else. That was worth something to Merlin.

"And besides," he said, "it's not like I'm going to go nuclear and burn down the school if I slip up. I'm more likely to accidentally summon something from across the room before I have a chance to get up and fetch it manually. It's not dangerous."

"It is to _you_ , Merlin," Arthur said pointedly. "That's plenty enough to get you in a lot of trouble."

Merlin swallowed; as if he needed reminding of the hazards of being what he was. "It's under control," he said anyway.

Arthur didn't look entirely convinced, but he just passed Merlin more notes even though he hadn't so much as glanced at the ones he already had. Merlin slumped back in his chair, reaching up to rub at his tired eyes and dreading putting them to work again. He rolled his head to either side, trying to stretch the tension out of his neck, and caught sight of Mordred a few tables away.

He had spent a good long while the night before straining to remember anything at all about Mordred. He was a year below them, so they didn't have any classes together, nor did they share any extracurricular activities. There was no way he could think of that they might have found out each other's carefully guarded secrets, but he was missing a lot of puzzle pieces so maybe that wasn't surprising. Merlin was almost jealous of his former-self; he had never known another magic user besides Gaius, had never had anyone to share experiences with who really understood them.

Mordred looked tired, or maybe sick. He was pale—paler than he usually was—and he had dark circles beneath his eyes. A pang of sympathy went through Merlin as he recognized the look of someone who hadn't slept in days, too stressed to contemplate resting. Mordred was hunched over an open book, a notebook at his side and a pencil in hand, but he wasn't reading. He was looking at them.

Merlin sat up and pushed his chair back.

"Where are you going?" Arthur asked.

Merlin nodded in Mordred's direction. "Look at him, Arthur," he said. "He looks like he hasn't had a good night's rest since you caught us out. Did you ever talk to him about it?"

"Why would I do that? I don't think he even knows I overheard."

"Obviously he does, look at him!" Merlin said, exasperated. "Good lord, Arthur! For months he's probably been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Obviously that sort of stress isn't good for him. He deserves to know that he's safe."

Merlin ignored Arthur's hissed protest and made his way through the cramped library tables to Mordred's. Mordred did a double take as he approached. Merlin smiled, hoping to put him at ease, but Mordred only stared at him.

"Hey, Mordred," he said, nervous energy and jumpy magic making him tap his thumb against his thigh. Mordred looked as wary of him as Arthur had when he'd mentioned his magic control issues, his eyes darting around as if he were looking for someone to come to his rescue.

Merlin tried smiling again. It didn't do him any good. "Look, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute," he said. "About what happened a while back."

Mordred twitched, dropping his pencil and nearly tearing the page out of his notebook.

"It's alright!" Merlin hastened to say. "Really, it's okay. Arthur isn't going to say anything to anyone about what he overheard. You don't have anything to worry about, I promise."

Merlin had meant to be reassuring, but Mordred didn't look reassured at all. If anything, he looked even more spooked, eyes widening almost to the point of bulging and gripping the edge of the table with white-knuckled fingers. He nodded a bit frantically and managed to give what he might have meant to be a smile of some sort before Merlin decided to quit while he was ahead.

"You nearly gave the poor kid a panic attack," Arthur said as Merlin sat back down at their table. "What the hell did you say?"

"Only that you didn't intend to turn him in!" Merlin said. "Which, really, he should have figured out on his own by now considering it's been two months and the Firearms Unit hasn't come to kick in his door yet."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Just study or something, why don't you?"

Merlin obediently pulled a few pages toward him and started copying down the dates just as absently as he had done with Gwen's earlier. It was boring and tedious and frustrating and Merlin couldn't resist glancing back at Mordred instead. Mordred was still looking at them, only this time he had his mobile in hand and was texting furiously. He stopped as soon as he noticed Merlin watching him and snatched up his textbook.

Merlin turned back to his own work, but his eyes refused to focus. His vision swam and there was a pulse of heat building at the base of his skull. He knew the pain was coming this time, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. The last thing he was aware of was Arthur's hand on his arm before everything dissolved around him.

 _Merlin's trainers scuffed across a packed dirt floor, raising little clouds of dust with every step, but he paid them no mind. The path was well-worn and his weren't the only footprints. All around him was green, uniform green in every direction with clear sky overhead, just darkening into evening._

 _Merlin reached out to drag his fingers along the wall of greenery, thick hedges standing head-and-shoulders taller than him. Leaves and twigs got caught between his fingers and he shook them loose before moving on, following the path until he hit another wall. He turned left without hesitation and walked until he found an almost unnoticeable gap in the right hedge. He took the blind turn with the certain ease of long familiarity, heading unerringly for the heart of the maze._

Merlin came back to find his notebook disorientingly close to his face. He tried to jerk back up, but Arthur had a hand on the back of his neck, keeping him bent over.

"The fuck, Arthur?" he bit out, trying to buck him off.

Arthur snatched his hand away and Merlin sat up to see him scanning the room with that little crease between his eyebrows again. Arthur gave a big smile and waved his hand, mouthing "he's fine!" over Merlin's shoulder at someone, then he grabbed Merlin's shoulder to keep him from turning to look. He let go almost immediately.

"You had another one of those...episodes," he whispered. "And your eyes went all—"

He didn't need to say it for Merlin to get the message. Merlin cursed under his breath, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes in the hopes that it might alleviate the throbbing pressure there. It didn't work. In fact it sort of made it worse, so he moved his hands to his temples instead, rubbing circles there. "Did anyone see?"

"No," Arthur said. "No, I got you down in time."

"Thanks for that," Merlin muttered. The library's lights seemed twice as bright as they had been before, stabbing at Merlin's eyes and straight into his overwrought brain. "It was a maze, by the way," he said. "What I saw. In case you were wondering."

"Another memory?"

Merlin nodded but stopped quickly when the pain in his head flared at the movement.

"Merlin, are you sure that you're alright?" Arthur asked, more urgently. "Maybe we should call your doctor, let him know what's going on with you."

"I already told you, Arthur, I can't _do_ that," Merlin said. "What the hell am I supposed to tell him anyway?"

"That your memories are coming back," Arthur said. "That's a good thing, isn't it? They can tell you if it's normal for you to get headaches like this and—"

"And if it's normal for my eyes to glow like to a bloody _sorcerer_?" Merlin snapped. "This _isn't_ normal, Arthur. I already know that much. Nothing about this is normal! This is my magic overcoming a magical mind-wipe!"

Arthur looked like he might just get up and leave out of frustration, but he didn't. "Then you should at least talk to Gaius about it," he said.

"I'm not doing that either." Merlin sighed, too tired for arguing like this. "Look, Arthur, it's fine. It's not as bad as it looks. I haven't been sleeping lately anyway. I'm just overwhelmed."

"It's more than that and you know it," Arthur insisted, but it was halfhearted at best, like he knew that there was no point. Like he was done trying. He started scooping up his history notes and tucking them back into his backpack, his movements sharp and unnecessarily forceful. He zipped it up and stopped, looking at Merlin with one of those new, shuttered expressions that Merlin couldn't parse. "Just take it easy, Merls," he said finally.

The lump in Merlin's throat caught him by surprise. Arthur had said that to him a million times before, both casually—thrown out as they parted ways after a long day—and seriously—when he pushed himself too hard during finals and forgot that eating and sleeping were things that needed to happen—but it had almost always been accompanied by a slap on the back or a ruffle of his hair. Now Arthur was at arm's length, avoiding eye contact and looking for all the world like he didn't want to be there at all, like he couldn't bear to touch Merlin in even the friendliest of ways now that he knew.

Merlin sniffed and snatched up his backpack too, stuffing papers inside heedless of the way they would get crumpled under his books. "Yeah," he said, his voice rough. "Yeah, I'm just gonna go home and sleep for a week. I'll be fine."

"You're sure you can make it home on your own with your head like that?" Arthur asked, sounding like he might still care.

"I'll be fine," Merlin repeated more firmly, really just wanting to get away. He stood up and pushed in his chair with his hip, donning his backpack and noticing gratefully that the pain in his head was subsiding. He glanced back toward Mordred's table as he followed Arthur out of the library, but he was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Merlin rubbed at his gritty, tired eyes and hitched his backpack higher up on his shoulder. He was taking his sweet time on his way to school today, meandering through the smaller backstreets and kicking rocks as he went; he had left the house over a half hour early, long since awake and too tense to sit still any longer. Sleeping was difficult when he half-expected his brain to self-destruct at any moment or otherwise pelt him with vaguely concerning memories that felt more like some bizarre, fully-immersive, virtual reality video game than his _life_.

He hadn't had another flashback since the one in the library the day before, the one with the disturbingly uniform hedge maze that he had seemed to know like the back of his hand, but there had been...flickers. Moments when pain spiked through him just long enough for him to get a flash of something that definitely was not there, places he had never seen, unfamiliar faces, snatches of conversation. None of it told him anything, too short and disjointed and without any sort of context. All these did was put him on edge, mostly because he wasn't sure if his eyes went gold like they did with the full 3D experience.

Merlin noticed that he was scratching at his own leg, dragging his fingernails repeatedly over his jeans in an effort to get rid of the itching under his skin. He made himself stop, latching on to the strap of his bag with a white-knuckled grip instead.

His magic was as unsettled by all of this as he was, like a dog tugging incessantly at its leash. He had almost broken the bathroom door off its hinges the previous night when it had gotten jammed, like it had a million times before, and he had called up his magic to unstick it only to have it flare up so strongly that it would have smashed the door into splinters if he hadn't reined it in quickly enough.

Merlin's mobile buzzed in his pocket. He was surprised to find a text from Arthur, the first one in the thread since sometime in early February. _At the school, out front_ , it said. There was still plenty of time before school started and Arthur had never been an early riser, which mean that he had deliberately come early, presumably because he knew that Merlin wasn't sleeping well and would likely do the same. Merlin stared at the text, taken aback and more than a little confused, until he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and then pocketed his mobile again without responding.

Arthur was waiting in the courtyard in front of the school just like the text had said, leaning against the plinth of the school's griffin mascot statue with his own backpack slung over his shoulder. There was a beam of early morning sunlight slicing through the typical cloud cover and it just happened to land directly on Arthur, limning him in gold and making his light hair shine. He looked impossibly regal, like something out of a Renaissance painting or a medieval tapestry of kings, somehow lofty and unapproachable even in his jeans and Henley.

It wasn't the first time that Merlin had been struck by that particular image, but it was the first time that it almost stopped him, almost made him walk away. It had always been fine before because Arthur had wanted him by his side, had waved him over with a bright smile and made him feel like he belonged there. But Arthur wasn't welcoming anymore, just stiff and distant. He caught sight of Merlin, though, and summoned him with a jerk of his head before Merlin could turn tail and run.

"You get home alive yesterday?" Arthur asked by way of greeting, so nonchalantly that it almost sounded dismissive, like it didn't matter to him at all.

Merlin rolled his eyes as he leaned next to him, irritated. "No," he sniped, "I got snatched up by the bad men in the white van, and I've only just escaped. Help me, Obi Wan, you're my only hope."

Arthur actually snorted. "You joke," he said, "but with the way that all of this is going, I wouldn't be particularly surprised."

Merlin shrugged, unease creeping into his stomach. He hadn't had a flashback of anything like that, but Arthur was sort of right. His life was starting to feel like a film and he could practically hear the ominous music swelling in the background even now as they stood innocuously in the courtyard, other students milling around them on all sides, discussing homework and weekend plans and other such trivial things.

"Any more visions?" Arthur asked, his voice pitched low enough that no one could overhear.

Merlin bit his lip and shook his head. "Not really," he said, equally quiet. "A few quick flashes, but nothing like the last ones."

"You mean, nothing that helps?"

"I don't even know what _would_ help," Merlin sighed, his sleepless nights catching up to him all at once. "I don't know what I'm waiting for."

Arthur shifted on his feet, angling himself more toward Merlin in the most subtle and unconcerned way possible even as his eyes swept the courtyard. It made Merlin go tense all over, the way that Arthur seemed to be looking for threats, acting as if they were being watched.

"I mean, you said before that you thought someone had _done_ this to you," Arthur said. "That they took your memories on purpose?"

"Maybe."

"Then I suppose you're waiting for something that would explain _who_."

Merlin scratched at his eyebrow, looking around at all the teenagers around them, his peers, worried about nothing more than whether or not they'll be late to homeroom. "I don't know, Arthur. You don't think I'm just being paranoid? I mean, that's crazy, isn't it?"

Arthur looked at him, face inscrutable but his gaze intense. "Well, you said that your instincts are usually pretty reliable. What's your gut feeling telling you?"

At the moment, his gut was in an uncomfortable knot for so many reasons he couldn't even detangle them. A prickling on the back of his neck had Merlin turning around. Mordred was across the courtyard, watching them. Even from a distance Merlin could see the deep bruises under his eyes, see how pale and thin he was. He didn't look away this time like he had the day before.

The knot in Merlin's stomach tightened and he said to Arthur, "That there's more going on than we realize."

The first bell rang, so loud and shrill that Merlin nearly jumped out of his skin. Everyone in the courtyard began herding towards the doors, but they still had ten minutes before they were late so Merlin didn't rush. He wasn't keen on getting caught up in the press of a crowd right now, not with his magic pressing against his skin from underneath and making him feel strangely squeezed and pent up even when standing alone.

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and left them there a minute, watching the constellations flare up against his eyelids. After a while he heard Arthur clear his throat somewhere in front of him.

"Come on," he said gruffly. "Let's get to class. You may have a medical excuse for being late but I don't."

Merlin pushed off the plinth, taking a deep breath and fortifying himself for the coming day, but before he had taken his first step towards the doors there was a terrible grinding _crack_.

Arthur figured it out before he did. His eyes widened, jerking _up_ , somewhere behind and above Merlin's head. He shouted " _Look out_!" and dove at Merlin, tackling him. They hit the ground hard and rolled into the grass in a tangle of bruised limbs. Merlin tried to shake off the disorientation and he turned his head just in time to see the old griffin statue come down onto the cobblestones.

It shattered with an almighty crash that echoed off the stone buildings and metal lockers and reverberated back again. Debris exploded outward, a cloud of dust and stone chips billowing up to blanket the courtyard. It stung Merlin's eyes, clogged his nostrils and made him cough, but he was far enough away that none of the considerably-sized chunks of stone that went flying made contact with him. Once the clattering stopped and he was sure nothing was going to suddenly squash him, Merlin closed his eyes and just tried to breath for a minute. His heart was pounding wildly out of rhythm and the aborted adrenaline rush was making him dizzy.

It wasn't until Arthur started coughing that Merlin registered the fact that Arthur was essentially lying on top of him, pinning him down or maybe shielding him. He could feel every jerk of Arthur's chest where it was pressed against his own and Arthur's harsh breathing was loud in his ear. It was far from the first time they'd been physically close, considering how long they'd known each other, but with their personal situation being what it was, everything felt just that little bit different, somehow off. For a moment, though, it seemed as though Arthur was just going to stay there, sagging down onto him in relief like a very heavy blanket.

In the end, Merlin didn't even have to say anything. He just cleared his throat, his confusion betrayed by an uncomfortable fidget. The second Arthur realized the position they were in, he all but flung himself off, ending up on his arse a yard away. Merlin pushed himself up and tried not to feel too hurt by the vehemence of it; it had been an awkward moment, he told himself, and it was a reasonable enough reaction, considering everything. It probably wasn't because he was a magical freak and Arthur couldn't bear to be anywhere near him. It was just the leftover adrenaline that was making Arthur flushed and unusually spastic. They'd both almost just died, after all.

"You okay?" Merlin asked, another suppressed cough making him stutter.

Arthur nodded, though he was rubbing at his arm like it hurt. He shook it out and pushed himself to his feet. He didn't offer Merlin a hand up. Instead he strode back toward the statue, or what was left of it, kicking his way through the rubble until he found the griffin's beaked head where it had broken away from its neck, kneeling down to examine it.

People were started to flood back into the courtyard, students and teachers who had heard the ruckus. There was a lot of gasping and worried mutters, but most people were staying clear. Merlin stood awkwardly in the midst of it, very aware of all the eyes on him. One pair in particular drew his attention; the dark eyes of a tall bearded man whom he was fairly certain wasn't part of the school's administrative staff.

Considering he'd just been body-slammed and pretty much every part of him was sore, Merlin didn't notice the increase in pain that signaled an encroaching memory until it was almost too late for him to hide it. As his vision began to blur in earnest, he sat down hard right where he was and put his head between his knees to hide his flashing eyes. He could still feel the man watching him as he went under.

 _Merlin had to keep his hands stuffed in his pockets to stop himself from running them over everything in the room, every book and trinket and focus item that lined the shelves. There was so much magic here, seeped into every inch, and all of it reached out to him, calling to him like an old friend. He was grinning helplessly, he knew he was, and he probably looked like an idiot but the man at his back seemed to find it amusing._

" _You can touch if you want, Merlin," Julius said. "That's why we're here, after all."_

 _Merlin immediately reached for the nearest book, opening it slowly and carefully in deference to how old and thin the pages looked. There was so much magic concentrated here. He couldn't read the words on the page though, so he looked back up. "Who exactly is 'we', if you don't mind me asking?"_

" _People like you, Merlin," Julius said. "Gifted people who want nothing more than to share that gift with others."_

" _You mean magic?" Merlin couldn't help but whisper, eyes darting nervously to make sure no one overheard. This was a tiny backroom in a public library and there didn't seem to be anyone around, but one could never be too careful when this subject came up, not if one wanted to live._

 _Julius saw his display of caution and lifted a hand toward the door. It shimmered for a split second, just as Julius' eyes flared gold, and a frisson went down Merlin's spine. He knew somehow that no one outside that door could hear a thing they said. It was magic like he'd never seen before, the type of thing that Gaius had refused to teach him no matter how much he begged, and Merlin couldn't help but stare._

 _Julius smiled at him. "There is so much you do not know," he said. "So much you have yet to learn. The beauty of magic is limitless, Merlin, if only you have someone to guide you."_

 _Merlin's smile faltered, all of Gaius' warnings sounding like claxons in his head. He wasn't supposed to talk to anyone about magic, wasn't supposed to speak of it at all. Force it down, keep it hidden, pretend it didn't exist. Pretend he was something he wasn't. But Julius wasn't pretending. He had an entire room filled with magical paraphernalia and could soundproof rooms with a wave of his hand. Wouldn't it come in handy, being able to do that? Wouldn't it help keep him safe if he could do things like that? Where was the harm?_

" _Someone like you, you mean?" he asked. Because it certainly wasn't going to be Gaius._

" _Not just me," Julius told him. "There's a group of us—an organization, if you will. Experienced practitioners who seek out talented youths and train them, passing down generations' worth of knowledge that would otherwise be lost."_

" _Isn't that...I mean, doing that is illegal, isn't it?" Merlin asked. It was, he knew it was. But it had been every bit as illegal when it had just been Gaius teaching him to meditate, to focus himself, to get a grip on his powers and hold them in check. Both were punishable by lifetime imprisonment or death. What Julius was describing couldn't really be any_ more _illegal than anything else._

 _Julius laughed and put a hand on his shoulder. "Merlin, my boy. Everything we_ do _is illegal by virtue of our very existence," he pointed out. "In simply being the way we are, we must operate outside the confines of the law. It isn't fair, it isn't right, but that's how it is."_

" _I hate it," Merlin bit out, letting go of the delicate book in his hands before he could tear the pages in his sudden anger. "It shouldn't be like that."_

" _We agree with you," Julius said, squeezing his shoulder tightly. "And we work tirelessly for a future where maybe, just maybe, people like us will be able to live freely."_

 _Merlin looked up at him, stunned. "You really think that could happen?"_

" _If we work together, Merlin," Julius told him, earnest and bright-eyed. "If we pool our resources and our knowledge, we can achieve anything. Such a path is fraught with peril, I won't lie about that, but the goal is a worthy one. And extraordinary young men like you can help us achieve that goal."_

 _Merlin stared. The prospect of freedom, of living a life full of magic and unhindered by the desperation and fear he had never known a day without, was staggering. He looked around at the books lining the walls, dozens of them all pulsing with energy and promise, filled with real spells._

" _And you would teach me magic?" he asked. "Like, really teach me?"_

" _Oh Merlin," Julius chuckled, clapping him on the back. "We can teach you magic the likes of which you would never have dreamed of before."_

 _The helpless smile was back, the pulse of magic all around him making him giddy. Here was a chance to actually make use of his gifts, to do something other than hide and cower in fear of a world that hated him. Here, with Julius and the others, maybe he could finally take pride in what he was and what he could do._

" _I'm in."_

Merlin was halfway to his feet when he came back to himself, being dragged upright by strong hands on his arms. He staggered and nearly fell, but Arthur's hands against his back steadied him. The school nurse was manhandling him, asking him questions and trying to look in his eyes with a little flashlight. Merlin pushed him off, insisting that he was fine and, no, he hadn't gotten beaned in the head by debris, the headaches were par for the course with him now, he had an underlying condition and he was _fine_. It took several long and excruciating minutes to make the fussing stop.

Arthur was still there by the time Merlin finally convinced the nurse that he didn't actually have a concussion, waiting with his hands in his pockets and his head down. The rest of the students were being herded back inside by harried-looking teachers and the janitorial staff had come out with garbage bags to start cleaning up the mess. Merlin looked for the man—Julius, Julius Borden, he knew now—but he had disappeared.

"Are you really alright?" Arthur asked quietly.

Merlin knew better than to try nodding when his head was pounding like someone had taken a mallet to it and said, "Yeah, I'm fine." He reached up to shade his eyes because even the diffuse light of early sun through heavy cloud cover was enough to feel like needles in his retinas.

"What did you see?" Arthur asked, pressing close to his side to keep the nearest janitor from hearing.

Merlin hesitated. "I'm not sure," he finally admitted. "It was sort of like...like a recruitment spiel, maybe."

"A recruitment spiel?" Arthur repeated, baffled. "Recruitment for what?"

"Hell if I know." Merlin snatched his backpack off the ground, dusting it off and sending stone chips flying. "But I'm starting to think it wasn't as good as it sounded at the time."

He turned to lead the way back into the school because his classes didn't just go away because his head hurt and he was maybe involved in something he shouldn't have been. There were only a few stragglers left outside, most of them fiddling around in their lockers and putting off going to class, but none of them were paying him and Arthur any heed.

Except for Mordred. He was half-hidden behind one of the pillars lining the courtyard, still watching them, but he wasn't alone anymore. This time, Morgana was at his side and they were whispering furiously together. Merlin frowned at them; he didn't think that Mordred and Morgana even knew each other, but then he hadn't thought that _he_ had known Mordred either and had since been proven wrong.

He tripped over a piece of the griffin's broken wing and nearly went sprawling. Arthur caught him by the arm with a painfully familiar huff of exasperation and set him back on his feet. By the time Merlin looked back, Mordred had his face buried in his locker and Morgana was nowhere to be seen.


	4. Chapter 4

They were one class away from lunch by the time Gwen gave in to her nosiness. The bell hadn't rung just yet and the teacher was still puttering around at her desk, ignoring the noisy horde of undisciplined teenagers. Gwen turned right around in her seat to face Merlin and said bluntly, "Alright, what's going on with you?"

Merlin mouthed at her, as wrong-footed by her bluntness as he always was. Of course, usually he had fewer things to lie about and cover up when she asked questions like that and while he had a number of tried-and-true excuses to use for the normal culprits, like magical exhaustion and accidental magic usage and training sessions with Gaius he needed to attend, none of those would work now. So he just settled for: "What?"

Gwen huffed at him, impatient and completely not fooled by his faux-innocence. "You look like you haven't slept in days, Merlin," she said. "You're fidgeting fit to crawl out of your skin. And you've been looking over your shoulder every ten minutes like you've got hellhounds nipping at your heels. That's not like you at all."

"I'm fine," Merlin said, not really expecting that it would placate her but hoping all the same. "Just tired. Stressed. Lots of reasons to be stressed, you know."

Gwen sighed, her urge to be sympathetic winning out over her determination to get answers, as it usually did. "It's just, you look ten times more tired today than you did even two days ago, and you had just as many reasons to be stressed then. What's changed since?"

Merlin shook his head. "Nothing."

Gwen's eyes slid to the left, where Arthur was sitting in the next row. It was where he had always sat, next to Merlin, like in every class they shared in the last six years. But it was not where he had sat for the last two months. Merlin cringed internally, knowing where this interrogation was going next. Sure enough, when Gwen looked back at him she had eyebrows raised.

"Nothing's changed?" she asked, all skepticism. "Nothing at all?"

Arthur didn't look up from his geometric doodling, the only sign that he wasn't completely oblivious to the conversation going on beside him the clench of his jaw, and Merlin was left squirming.

For all his secrets, he truly hated lying to his friends. Especially Gwen, who was just too nice and understanding and wonderful for anyone to lie to with any sort of clean conscience. But he couldn't tell her what was really going on, couldn't drag her into this with him, not when he didn't even know what it was exactly that he'd gotten himself into. Or how dangerous it may or may not be. And besides, he wasn't entirely sure what was going on with Arthur anyway. It was beyond complicated in more ways than he could explain.

He rubbed at his forehead, cursing his past self and wishing he could just hide his head under a pillow and nap for a week. Maybe that would get rid of the low throb in his head that never quite went away.

Gwen leaned in closer, whispering now. "Look, not that I'm not thrilled with the progress and everything, but seriously. You two are best friends for years, then you stage a completely inexplicable World War III and are mortal enemies for two months, and now _nothing_ happens and suddenly you're on speaking terms again but not acknowledging it? Mm, no, try again."

"Look, Gwen," Merlin started, not knowing what he was going to say, what he _could_ say, to get her off his back without having to actually explain anything. "It's...it's complicated, okay?"

Gwen scoffed. "You and Arthur have never been complicated," she said.

Merlin's head gave a vicious throb, punching a gasp out of him. He had a moment of bright clarity to recognize that the memories were coming faster and more often before the pain dragged him down, away from Gwen's worried face.

" _Why are you being like this?" Merlin demanded, following in Arthur's wake, refusing to let him walk away._

 _Arthur rounded on him. "Jesus, Merlin, really? The fact that you even feel the need to_ ask _that—"_

" _You know what happens to people like me," Merlin shot back. "If anyone finds out, that's it, game over!"_

" _I'm not anyone, Merlin!" Arthur shouted. "I haven't been just_ anyone _in a while now, have I? Especially after—"_

" _This isn't about that," Merlin said. "That doesn't change anything. That doesn't make it any easier to bring something like this up. All it really did was raise the stakes here."_

" _We are not a fucking poker game," Arthur snapped. "You don't get to gamble on our—"_

" _Every day of my life is a gamble, Arthur!" Merlin threw up his hands, well and truly fed up with everything. "I'm playing Russian roulette every time I step out my front door. You have_ no idea _what that's like."_

" _Because you didn't_ tell me _, Merlin."_

" _I didn't tell anyone," Merlin repeated through gritted teeth because Arthur wasn't_ getting _it. "I can't just tell people."_

" _You told Mordred," Arthur said with a sharp, spiteful sort of smile on his face now. "Didn't have any problem telling him, chatting it up in the corridor like you're discussing dinner plans."_

" _That—that's different," Merlin insists, floundering for words, for a way to explain properly. "Mordred and I, we're the same, we share—"_

" _Oh yes, you two are peas in a pod. Magical pals doing magical things, riding off into the fucking magical sunset together," Arthur spat, waving a dismissive hand that makes indignation boil in Merlin's gut, low and hot._

" _It's not like that," he said, even as his magic burned in his palms, angry and eager to lash out if only he would let it. That was a sensation that Mordred knew as well as he did, and one that Arthur would never understand no matter how he tried to explain it._

" _Isn't it?" Arthur demanded with an ugly laugh. "You and Mordred, you're the_ same _, but us? You and me?" He shook his head. "We're just too different, is that it?"_

" _Yeah, maybe it is," Merlin said, a vicious sort of satisfaction welling in him at the stunned, almost hurt look that put on Arthur's face, like he hadn't expected Merlin to agree with him._

" _Right then," Arthur said. "I guess that settles that."_

 _He walked away, and this time Merlin didn't follow._

Merlin came to with tears in his eyes for a multitude of reasons, none of which he wanted to discuss in front of a class full of his peers. The most pressing, and the most easily explained, was the pain that he was definitely not getting used to no matter how many times this happened. He waited for the worst of it to subside before trying to open his eyes, the classroom's fluorescent lighting the newest bane of his existence.

Arthur was leaning across the aisle now, one elbow planted on Merlin's desk. He was talking to Gwen, saying, "—working it out, it's fine. It just took us a while to sort ourselves, but now we're—" while Gwen frowned at him like she didn't quite believe anything he was saying. She tried to turn back to Merlin, concerned, but Arthur surged forward with more aggressive reassurances, obviously trying to keep her attention on him while Merlin pulled himself together.

A sharp-nailed finger tapped on Merlin's shoulder and drew him away from Gwen and Arthur's conversation. He turned to find Morgana leaning over from her seat behind and to the right of him, her perfectly shaped eyebrows drawn together in a tight V.

"Are you alright?" she asked. "You look like your head hurts."

Merlin tried to nod, but that only made it worse. In fact, the pain flared up for just a second and a face flashed before his eyes, a man's face covered in scars, terrible burn scars. It was gone in an instant but Arthur's hand was already on his back, grounding and reassuring.

"Merlin?"

"What's going on?" Morgana pressed, reaching forward to take hold of his arm and staring at him with those piercing green eyes. "Merlin, are you starting to remember? Is that what this is?"

Another spike of pain and Merlin nearly doubled over as a voice, smooth and unctuous, drifted through his mind— _"Don't worry, it will heal. One quick spell and it'll barely even scar!"_

The pounding heat at the base of his skull wasn't subsiding like it usually did after these quick glimpses; if anything it was getting worse, swelling until he was biting back a scream. He could barely make out Gwen's cry of alarm, Morgana's continued questions, the murmuring of the rest of the classmates.

He heard Arthur say, "I'll just take him to the nurse, this has happened before, it'll pass!" and then he was being hauled to his feet. He didn't dare open his eyes, but he staggered forward as best he could and let Arthur steer him out into the hallway. They had barely made it around the corner before Merlin's legs gave way and he went down hard.

 _Grimoires were laid out on Merlin's bedspread, ancient and powerful books covering every inch that wasn't taken up by the teenagers studying them. Merlin turned the page of the one closest to him and read on, but Morgana made a frustrated noise and pushed aside the notes she had been taking._

" _It's not fair that you pick this up so quickly," she said with a pout. "I've been studying the Ancient Language longer than you have, I should know it better!"_

 _Merlin laughed. "Sorry," he said. "Not my fault, you know. Just how it is! You'll have to take it up with magic itself if you don't like it."_

 _Morgana kicked his shoulder. "I know, I know. The more powerful you are, the easier it comes to you. Doesn't mean I can't complain about it."_

 _Merlin stuck out his tongue at her and flipped to the next page._

" _You know, Alvarr says he's never seen anyone take to it so fast," Morgana said, half-jealous and half-admiring. "Morgause too. According to her, even the higher-ups are impressed with you."_

" _Whoever they are," Merlin muttered, too caught up in the spell he was studying to care all that much about the vague Powers That Be, whom he had yet to meet anyway._

 _Morgana shifted around until they were shoulder to shoulder on their stomachs, nudging him. "Hey, that's a good thing," she said. "Morgause says they're thinking about offering you a real apprenticeship. Like advanced spells, specialized training or something."_

" _Specialized? What sort of specialized?" Merlin asked, intrigued._

 _Morgana shrugged. "Morgause wouldn't say. It's probably classified, super-secret, then-I'd-have-to-kill-you-type stuff."_

 _Merlin snorted and reached for a new book, the arcane symbols scratched into the page shimmering before his eyes in a way that somehow managed to translate into something he understood instinctively. The bizarre sensation had bothered him for a while, but the language didn't faze him anymore, not the way it did Morgana or Mordred or any of the other kids he had studied with over the last few weeks._

 _Morgana took a few more notes then stopped to twirl her pen in her fingers, biting her lip._

" _You still haven't heard anything from Arthur?" she asked, though she sounded like she already knew the answer._

 _Merlin's jaw clenched. "Don't want to."_

" _I still can hardly believe that he reacted that way," she said hotly. "I'm ashamed to be related to such a heartless bigot! Honestly, I would expect that sort of reaction from Uther, but Arthur I really thought would be better than that."_

" _Yeah, well, I guess he had us both fooled there," Merlin said bitterly._

 _Morgana draped her arm over his shoulders, pulling him into a half-hug. "He's a prick. And he's wrong. So if you ever want me to hex him for you—"_

 _Merlin laughed and pushed her off. "Believe me, if anyone is gonna hex him, it'll be me."_

Merlin came to with Morgana's name on his lips. He was on the floor again, pressed against the wall with Arthur knelt in front of him and looking obviously worried this time, but he reared back when Merlin suddenly began flailing.

"Whoa, whoa!" he said, catching Merlin's wrists in his hands and holding him still. "Morgana's still inside. What about her?"

"She was—" Merlin tried to put words together to form a sentence, but coherency was beyond him when he hurt so much. He had to hunch into himself and simply breathe for another few minutes until it subsided to a more tolerable level.

"Christ, Merlin," Arthur said, sounding somehow small and more helpless than Merlin could ever remember him sounding. "You can't go on like this."

Merlin managed to shake his head, though it still made his stomach turn over; there was nothing he could do. No doctor could help him with this because it wasn't a medical issue. It was magic, and no one would be _able_ to help him with that. Or at least, those who could would be arrested if they tried. And besides, this was a good thing, in theory. He was getting his memories back, more and more by the day. His magic was overcoming the spell that had been cast on him. The fact that the warring magics were maybe tearing him apart was irrelevant.

"Morgana," he said again. His tongue felt swollen and hot; he wondered if he had bitten it.

"What about her?" Arthur asked again.

"I saw her. She knew. She knows everything."

Arthur didn't understand, that much was obvious. He just looked at Merlin with that scrunched up expression of confusion that had always been equal parts aggravating and endearing. "What everything?" he asked.

" _Everything_ ," Merlin growled, the fading pain giving way to a hot anger instead. "She knows about my magic, about why we were arguing. She knows about the grimoires and about Mordred, and—and whoever was teaching me was teaching her too."

"What?" Arthur asked, already shaking his head. "No, that...that doesn't make any sense."

Merlin shoved Arthur back far more harshly than was necessary, nearly knocking him flat, but he couldn't stand to be boxed in against the wall anymore. He felt trapped, like he was an animal in a cage where someone was poking a sharp stick through the bars, and he needed to move. He stumbled getting to his feet but pushed Arthur's hands away when he tried to help.

"She _knows_ , Arthur, I saw it!" he said sharply. He only barely stopped himself from shouting at the last minute, remembering that the person in question was only one corridor over and there were classes in session all around them. "I heard it from her own mouth!"

"No, she can't," Arthur said, looking up at him from where he was still kneeling on the floor with wide, uncomprehending eyes. "She doesn't have—No, she would have said something if she—"

"She lied," Merlin gritted out. "Here I've been for weeks, scared out of my mind and not knowing anything, and she bloody well _lied_ about _everything_. She has fucking magic, and she could've told me what the fuck has been going on, but she—"

Arthur finally scrambled to his feet, his face clouding over. "Now wait! You can't just go accusing her of something like that," he said. "She can't be—"

"What, she can't be like me?" Merlin asked bluntly, staring him down. "She can't be a filthy sorcerer? A criminal, a liar? Is that what you mean?"

Arthur opened his mouth, then closed it again, holding himself so tightly that the tendons stood out in his neck. Abruptly, he turned away, both hands coming up to scrub over his face. "That's not what I meant," he said hoarsely. "But Merlin, she's…she's my _sister_. She can't have done what you're saying. _Why_ would she do that?"

"I don't fucking know, Arthur," Merlin said, throwing his hands up. "Why would somebody go out of their way to magically erase five months of my memories, hm? And is it really a stretch of the imagination to think that maybe these two things are related?"

"What, you think she was involved with that?" Arthur said, incredulous.

"She's definitely involved in something!" Merlin cried, making Arthur shush him in a panic and immediately scan the area for anyone who might have heard him. "And you heard her in there," he went on, a bit more quietly but no less agitated. "Asking all those questions. She seemed very interested in whether or not my memories were coming back. You and Gwen were more concerned with my health, but all she cared about was my memory. And— _and!_ —she was with Mordred this morning, and they looked very cozy."

"Since when is Mordred a suspect?"

"Since he knew what I was doing these last five months and didn't see fit to tell _me_ about it," Merlin said. "Same as her! They've both been deliberately keeping me in the dark, making sure that I don't know what I was involved in."

Arthur was very pale now, mouth working soundlessly as he struggled for anything to say in rebuttal. "I—I can't believe that she would do something like this," he finally said, but it didn't sound like a denial anymore, only a lament.

Merlin's anger collapsed in an instant, leaving him drained and exhausted and _sad_. Morgana was his friend, had been his friend for nearly as long as Arthur had. And apparently they'd gotten closer recently, had shared secrets between them, bonded over mutual interests and experiences. But now? He had trusted her and she had betrayed him, had deceived and manipulated him and left him to flounder when he had most needed his friends to have his back. His eyes burned and he rubbed at them, cutting off the tears before they could start.

"Me neither," he said roughly. He swayed on his feet, suddenly too tired to even contemplate finishing out the school day. "I need to go."

Arthur nodded and said, "Yeah, I'll, uh…I'll make your excuses. Or do you need a ride home? I can drop you."

Merlin started to say that he was fine, that he'd make it on his own, but a wave of dizziness swept over him and he found himself saying, "Yeah, I think you'd better." He headed for the exit and Arthur followed behind, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. It was a good thing he did, too.

As soon as they reached the first flight of stairs, between lifting his foot and setting it down again on the next step, something hit him, like a baseball bat had collided with his ankle and knocked his foot out from under him. As he started to tilt, Arthur's hand tightened its grip. It wasn't enough to stop him, but it did twist him around enough to turn it from a head-first fall into a sidewise roll. Before he could make contact, his magic slipped free of his hold and blasted forward, counteracting his forward momentum and cushioning the blow. He reached the bottom of the stairs relatively unscathed, though winded.

Arthur was at his side a moment later, frantic hands running over every inch of him and looking for broken bones or open wounds. It took Merlin a moment to rally himself enough to reassure him that he wasn't injured. The only thing that hurt was his ankle, but when he looked up there was nothing at the top of the stairs, nothing that could have tripped him.

To corroborate, Arthur was saying, "Good lord, Merlin, only _you_ could manage to trip on thin air at the top of a staircase and nearly brain yourself. As if your life isn't messy enough right now!"

He hauled Merlin to his feet again, looking him over another time just to be sure, but Merlin wasn't paying him any attention anymore. No, his eyes were drawn inexplicably down the corridor. A man was turning the corner, a man he was certain had no reason being in the school at all. Merlin got a glimpse of the waxy, discoloured ridges of burn scars, just before the man slipped out of sight.


	5. Chapter 5

Merlin did manage to sleep that night, if only because he was too exhausted to lay awake for hours on end as he had the several nights previous. He was still awake far earlier than he needed to be. He tossed and turned for as long as he could stand, but eventually he threw his backpack over his shoulder and began the familiar trek to school, blessing the gods that it was Friday; he didn't think he could handle much more of this collapsing in class thing, at least not without giving himself away. The visions were definitely coming faster, some with just a small scene, others lasting for several minutes before they let him go.

He rubbed at his chest, fingers tracing the crisscross of scars hidden under the thin fabric of his t-shirt. He'd seen how he had gotten them last night. It had been that burned man, Edwin Muirden. They had been fighting, sparring with magic, slinging spells back and forth in a way that Merlin had never imagined he would be capable of.

And he had been _loving_ it, relishing the rush of fire through his veins, riding the high of adrenaline and the frisson of fear even though he knew he wasn't in any real danger. He hadn't been the only one to walk away from the match bloody, but he and Edwin had had a good laugh about it as Edwin had talked him through the spells needed to set them both right. They had seemed like friends.

But then yesterday, at the school. Edwin had been there, when he'd "tripped" down the stairs. Like Borden had been there when the statue fell. That couldn't possibly be a coincidence, could it? Two men associated with some sort of magical organization that Merlin had been cursed into forgetting, both present at accidents that had nearly gotten him killed when they had no excuse for being there in the first place? Were those even accidents? Was Merlin just being paranoid, seeing a conspiracy where there was none?

Merlin shook his head and walked faster. He was being ridiculous. This wasn't some espionage film, and nobody was out to get him. He would get to school and Arthur would talk sense into him and then maybe he would stop feeling like there were eyes on his back, like he was being followed, hunted—

The shove came out of nowhere, like a brick wall had slammed into his back. He pitched forward into the road. A horn blared as a car swerved around him, tires squealing across the pavement. Merlin only managed to stay on his feet by virtue of his magic reaching out to stabilize him. That still left him in the middle of the busy street, though, and more horns sounded as a truck blew past him, the slipstream buffeting him sideways into the path of another vehicle.

Merlin made it to the other side of the street in one piece, but he was shaking and on the verge of hyperventilation. He looked wildly for who— _what_ —could have pushed him, but there was no one near where he had been standing. It wasn't until he wheeled entirely around that he caught sight of the man on the far street corner. Blond hair, slanted blue eyes. Alvarr, the man from his first recovered memory, the one who had given him the grimoire.

This was not a coincidence.

Alvarr looked angry, or maybe just frustrated that Merlin seemed so difficult to kill. For one heart-stopping moment, Merlin thought he would surge across the street to finish the job himself, but he just met Merlin's eye steadily for a long minute before turning his back and disappearing around the corner.

Merlin was barely conscious of walking the rest of the way to school to find Arthur in a grassy lot around the side of the main building—within sight of the school doors and mass of students milling around it but thankfully empty for the time being—caught up as he was in the low boil of panic in his gut. Arthur took one look at him and demanded to know what had happened, so Merlin told him. He told him about Alvarr with the cars and Borden with the statue and Edwin with the stairs. By the time he was finished, Merlin was sure it was only how blatantly shaken up he was that kept Arthur from laughing off his outlandish theory entirely.

"You seriously think someone is out to kill you?" Arthur asked, caught between incredulity and horror.

"I've nearly died three times in the last twenty-four hours, Arthur," Merlin pointed out. His hands were still trembling no matter how hard he clenched them into fists and there was a tremor to his voice that he didn't even bother trying to hide. "I know I've always been accident-prone, but not _this_ much! These can't all be accidents!"

"And you're sure you recognized these men?"

"Dead sure. I've seen all of them in my recovered memories."

Arthur was quiet for a long minute, chewing on the side of his thumb as he ignored Merlin's pacing. Then: "We have to tell the authorities."

Merlin whirled around to face him. "What?"

"If someone is actively trying to kill you," Arthur said, "then we need to tell the police, get you a protective detail or something."

Merlin stared. "Are you out of your _goddamn_ mind?"

Arthur huffed at him. "Merlin, you're in danger, we have to—"

"And you think going to the police is going to make it any less dangerous for me?" Merlin asked, absolutely flabbergasted. "I'm a _sorcerer_ , Arthur. They wouldn't protect me; they would arrest me."

Arthur licked his lips, frustrated. "If you just don't tell them that part—"

"What else am I supposed to tell them?" Merlin demanded. "That's sort of a crucial puzzle piece here. Should I not tell them about the magical organization either? The one that all these men belong to, that I was apparently a part of? How am I supposed to explain that these people are trying to kill me if I have no proof, no motive for it, and no way to connect it back to them without incriminating myself in the process?"

"Well, we can't just do _nothing_!" Arthur said hotly. "There's apparently a hit out on you, Merlin! Are you supposed to just sit back and wait until one of them gets to you?"

"That's better than handing myself over to the police and knowing for _certain_ that I'll end up dead," Merlin gritted out. "At least this way I have a fighting chance."

That shut Arthur up right quick. He backed away with a hand over his mouth, looking sick. Merlin was glad; maybe the reality of it was finally sinking in for him, the reality that Merlin had lived with every day of his life. For Arthur, the police had always meant safety and protection. If you're hurt or in trouble, go to the proper authorities and everything will be okay. That had never been an option for Merlin, not in any circumstance. His mother had taught him that if he saw the police coming, he should run as fast and as far as he could. That was the best way for him to survive, even now.

"Fuck, Merlin, you don't even know who you're fighting against," Arthur said, and Merlin wasn't the only one shaking now.

Merlin clenched his fists tighter, fingernails digging into his palms almost hard enough to draw blood. The pain helped to steady him, so he pushed harder. It didn't lessen the fear, not in the slightest bit. He had never been more terrified in his life and he would not be ashamed to admit it, but he wasn't just scared. He was angry. He wasn't quite sure where his anger was directed, whether it was at Alvarr or the organization or society as a whole for putting him into a situation like this where he had no choice but to face a threat like this alone, but he grabbed hold of it with a touch of relief; fear was a paralytic, but anger was nothing if not motivating.

"No," Merlin said. "But I know _something_." He was pacing again, too worked up to stand still any longer.

"What?" Arthur asked as he watched Merlin's progress around the small lot.

Merlin shook his head. "I don't remember. But I had to have known _something_ , something I shouldn't have. There's no other explanation."

"Something about this organization, you mean," Arthur extrapolated. "You stumbled upon information they didn't want you to have, and they needed to get rid of the threat."

"So they wiped my memory."

"And now that your memory is coming _back_ …"

Merlin came to an abrupt stop. "They need to get rid of me completely."

"But if they're willing to commit murder to bury this information," Arthur said, having a bit of trouble forcing the words out into the open, "then why didn't they just kill you to begin with? Why bother with the memory wipe in the first place?"

"Maybe it was just less messy that way. Or it was supposed to be, at least. From what I know, things like that are usually pretty permanent," Merlin said, carding a hand through his hair and down to his temple, rubbing; all the stress was making his head hurt more than usual and he couldn't afford not being able to think clearly right now. "The memories weren't supposed to come back. The only explanation I can think of is that my magic is naturally stronger than the magic of the person who cast the spell on me. So now they can't risk another wipe when they know it won't stick, and the only option they have left is killing me outright."

"How would they even know, though?" Arthur asked. "That your memories are coming back. The only person you've told about them is me, right?"

Merlin opened his mouth to confirm—he hadn't even told his mother about them, just said that he was getting minor headaches and everything was fine—but the familiar pain suddenly rippled down his spine, a flash of the hedge maze blocking his vision for second, and he staggered. Arthur rushed forward to steady him until the flicker passed, or else catch him if he fell. Merlin pushed him off, waiting for it to pass. When he opened his eyes again, he looked up to see someone leaning around the side of the building, watching them. Long dark hair and a purple handbag.

Morgana.

The pain redoubled in the blink of an eye and this time Merlin was grateful that Arthur was there to catch him.

 _The room was very small, cramped with just two filing cabinets and a shelving unit of cleaning supplies, but Merlin was less concerned with comfort and more concerned with making sure that no one overhead what he was saying._

" _Come with me," he whispered. "We can do it together."_

" _Are you out of your mind?" Morgana said, yanking her wrist out of his grip._

" _We don't have to do it in person," he said. "We can find a way to do it anonymously, just give them enough information to—"_

" _To what? To ruin everything we've worked for?" she hissed. "Why on earth would we want to do that?"_

" _You can't condone what she's doing."_

" _She's working towards a better world," Morgana insisted. "A world where we can live freely, where people like us will no longer be hunted down and condemned."_

" _You know she's doing more than that. There has to be a better way," Merlin said._

" _Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the greater good."_

 _Merlin shook his head, horrified. Morgana's lips were set in a tight line, her jaw clenched; she meant what she said. "Morgana, you don't know everything she's planning."_

" _I know that Nimueh has worked tirelessly to ensure that people like us will have a future," Morgana said. "That's all I need to know."_

 _She moved to leave, but Merlin grabbed her wrist again and held her back, ignoring her noise of indignation._

" _I won't be a part of this, Morgana. And I won't stand by and let it happen," he said, his voice hard and cold in a way it had never been before. His magic was coursing through him, every bit as enraged as he was, and a hiss of pain from Morgana told him that she could feel it where his skin met hers. He met her wide eyes directly. "Get out while you can or you go down with them."_

 _She wrenched her wrist free again, clutching it against her chest. She looked at him for a long moment, pale and shaken. Then she was shaking her head and fumbling for the door handle behind her, out and gone in an instant._

Merlin came back gasping, clutching at Arthur's arm around his chest. Arthur was half holding him up and half restraining him, but he was having something of a hard time with it considering Merlin's vehement distress. Merlin managed to fling himself out of Arthur's hold, landing hard on his hands and knees, and immediately heaved up his breakfast. Arthur's hands were on him again, gripping tight on his shoulders, running worriedly over his back, but Merlin ignored him in favor of looking to the edge of the lot. Morgana was no longer there.

"It was her," he said, the words almost torn out of him. They hurt to say, for more reason than the blinding ache that made his head feel like it wasn't attached to his body.

"Who was what?" Arthur demanded, frantic. "Goddamn it, Merlin, look at me, please!"

"Morgana," Merlin said, not taking his eyes off the spot where he had seen her. "It was her. She betrayed me, she turned me over to them. She's still passing them information on me. She's been watching me this whole time and reporting back to them."

Arthur cursed weakly, stunned enough to finally release his hold on Merlin and collapse beside him.

"I told her I was going to turn them in," Merlin said dully, strangely numb despite all the pain, distant and disconnected from it. He noted that he was shaking again, but he didn't bother trying to make it stop this time. "I knew something about their plans," he said. "Something I couldn't condone, and I was going to stop them. I wanted her to come with me, but she wouldn't. She defended them."

Arthur was quiet for a long time, his head in his hands. He was shaking too. The bell for class to begin rang out, shrill and insistent, but neither of them moved. What was school in the face of this? What did it matter when everything was falling apart around them?

Finally Arthur sniffed and rubbed his hand over his mouth. "We need help," he said, his voice hoarse.

Merlin shook his head, choosing the resurgence of pain over trying to unstick the sick knot in his throat.

"Maybe...maybe not the police," Arthur said. "I get why that would be too dangerous for you, but...but maybe someone else."

"Who?" Merlin managed.

"Gaius."

Merlin reared back in surprise and horror. Everything in him rebelled against the idea, the very thought of going to Gaius and admitting what had happened. Admitting that he had done exactly what Gaius had always warned him against doing and was in over his head because of it. Admitting that he was in trouble and needed help, needing _saving_.

But what else could he do? He _was_ in over his head and, as much as it bruised his pride, he _did_ need help, and he wasn't likely to get it from anyone else. Gaius had helped him through everything in his life, had been there for him since he was little and scared of what was happening to him. Gaius had never hesitated to come to his aid before, even when he had done something wrong and needed help covering it up. He was family.

"Merlin," Arthur said, soft and imploring. His eyes, when Merlin could bring himself to meet them, were red-rimmed, like he was trying not to cry. "You can't do this alone."

Merlin closed his eyes and considered just not opening them again. "I'll call him."


	6. Chapter 6

Merlin spent most of the school day in the nurse's office, privacy curtains pulled shut around the little camp bed in the back and a cloth over his eyes to block out the light. It took over an hour for the headache to fade after his latest memory—as much as it ever faded, at least, which wasn't completely—but he stayed where he was long past that, hidden away where he could pretend that none of it was real and therefore didn't have to face it. Maybe he was actually in a coma and all of this insanity was just some sort of fever dream. A very large part of him, probably the majority, was silently praying that that was the case. Dreams and comas could be woken up from, after all.

The nurse offered to call his mother or his doctor—apparently caught between thinking Merlin was faking to get out of class and thinking he was having an aneurysm or something and needed immediate medical intervention—but Merlin talked him down; there was absolutely nothing he wanted _less_ than for his mother to have any part in the mess that his life had become. He feigned sleep most of the day and might have actually dozed off a few times, but he kept being pulled out of it by flickers of memory—blond curls, a red leather jacket, _"Knights are meant to fight, Merlin, not to hide,"_ a bright blue-white glow, green leaves and a flash of sickly yellow light—each accompanied by a resurgence of pain.

By the time the final bell rang, Merlin didn't feel any more rested but he didn't feel any worse either, so he hauled himself to his feet and grabbed his backpack on the way out. He hung back as the other students flooded out the front doors, staying out of the way and just watching them go by. A month ago he had been just like them, safe and relatively carefree, worried about homework and exams. But, no, he hadn't been, whether he remembered it at present or not. No, a month ago he had been embroiled in some sort of plot and desperately looking for a way out of it. And even before that he had always had bigger concerns than the average teenager. Maybe he had never been like them, not really.

He saw Arthur hovering at the edge of the courtyard, eyes scanning the crowd, looking for him. After a moment's deliberation, Merlin decided he didn't have the energy to deal with Arthur right now, to face his fear and his worry, the uncomfortable tension that still underscored his every interaction with Merlin, his almost-grief over what Merlin had told him about his beloved sister. Merlin didn't want to see it, and maybe that was selfish but he was too exhausted to care at the moment. And besides, he had said that he would call Gaius. He didn't particularly want an audience for that.

Merlin went out the doors to the car park even though he didn't drive, then walked around the side of the school and toward home. He spent the first few minutes with his hands stuffed resolutely in his pockets, kicking at rocks and trying to convince himself to make the call. It was when he realized that he was, in fact, looking over his shoulder every ten seconds or so, just like Gwen had said yesterday, that he pulled his mobile out of his back pocket and scrolled through his contact list to the G's. He hesitated for one more moment, stuffing his pride down as far as it would go, and then clicked.

It rang for a long time and Merlin had a moment of conflicting feelings at the thought that Gaius might not be home, might not be available at all, might just not want to talk to him. Then there was a little _click_ and Gaius' familiar, worn out voice came over the line.

"This is Gaius," he said, brief and professional, a generic greeting that meant he didn't have caller ID on his landline phone.

Merlin cleared his throat. "Hi, Gaius," he said. "It's me, it's...it's Merlin."

There was a moment of silence that Merlin spent biting his lip and scanning the streets around him, just in case.

"Merlin."

Surprised, definitely, but Merlin couldn't parse anything else from his tone, whether or not Gaius was happy to hear from him or still angry or what.

"Hi," he said again, for lack of anything else to say.

"It's good to hear from you," Gaius said, and now he did sound a bit happy and something in Merlin heaved a sigh of relief; just because he and Gaius didn't see eye to eye anymore never meant that he wanted to lose his uncle entirely, to damage the relationship they had. He might not remember much of the time since Gaius had moved away, but even with only one month instead of six he still missed him.

"I was beginning to think you would never speak to me again," Gaius said, sounding a bit scolding.

Merlin rolled his eyes but refrained from pointing out that it wasn't as if Gaius had picked up a phone either. "I've been a bit busy lately, in case you haven't heard."

"Yes, your mother told me. How is your recovery?"

"It's fine," Merlin lied. "Look, I actually had something I wanted to ask you about."

He could practically _hear_ Gaius' look of pursed-lipped disapproval at his skirting of the subject, but since Gaius wasn't there to menacingly eyebrow at him, it wasn't nearly as effective. He heard Gaius huff, a rustle of fabric as the old man sat down, and then: "And of what nature is this question?"

"It's just, er—I'm just curious," Merlin said, distracted by a flash of red in his peripheral vision. There was nothing there when he turned to look. "Thought you'd be most likely to know about her."

"About whom?"

Merlin cleared his throat nervously, his free hand clenching around his backpack strap as he waiting at a crosswalk. He looked around again to make sure there was no one in the vicinity, no one to overhear. "Have you heard the name Nimueh before?"

Gaius' sharp intake of breath was not reassuring in the least.

" _Merlin_ ," Gaius said, harsh. "Where did you hear that name?"

"Just in passing," Merlin said, ignoring the sudden pounding of his heart and hoping his distress didn't come across in his voice. "Why, who is she?"

"She is _dangerous_ is who she is," Gaius barked. "Nimueh Blake is a criminal and an extremist. Who were you passing by to hear such a name?"

"Extremist?" Merlin said, ignoring his uncle's question. "Criminal, what kind of criminal? What did she do?"

"Merlin," Gaius said with exaggerated patience, "Nimueh Blake is the founder of the Knights of Medhir, a radical terrorist organization intent on destroying the existing government and replacing it with one prioritizing magic over all else."

"Terrorist organization," Merlin repeated, feeling faint.

It made a horrifying amount of sense when he thought about it. All that talk of the organization, of bettering the lives of magic users everywhere, of working together to make a brighter future for themselves. All of that at the expense of everyone else, they meant. Seeking not only to destroy the status quo but to _invert_ it, to make the oppressed into the oppressors. Taking talented young individuals, teenagers who were frightened and lonely, and offering them the training and support they had always wanted, slowly indoctrinating them until they championed the cause willingly. Just like Morgana. Just like _him_.

But he had tried to back out. He had been taken in by the pretty words in the beginning, but then he had heard or seen something that had changed his mind, something bad enough that he was willing to risk being outed as a sorcerer himself in order to stop it. Something bad enough that Nimueh was determined to have him killed to stop him turning traitor.

He heard again one of the flickers he'd had earlier, a cool woman's voice saying, " _Knights are meant to fight, Merlin, not to hide,_ " and he shuddered. He stopped walking, dizzy all of a sudden, light-headed with fear as he realized how _big_ this thing was that he had stumbled into. So much bigger than even someone like Gaius could handle. Dragging his uncle in was only going to get him killed too.

" _Merlin_ ," Gaius was saying again, more urgent. "Why are you asking me about her? What have you gotten yourself into?"

"Nothing," Merlin said blankly. "Nothing, I was just curious."

His magic felt staticky, unsettled, and it made the hairs on his arms stand on end. A shiver ran down his spine, a tickle of foreboding. He forced himself to move forward again despite the weakness in his knees, scanning his surroundings as a matter of course. Another flash of red caught his eye, the same shade as earlier, and he turned his head to chase after the sight. It was a woman in a red leather jacket, apparently standing at a bus stop a block back, but he knew—he _knew_ with all the certainty a gut feeling could lend him—that she wasn't waiting for a bus.

"Merlin, if you're involved in something—" Gaius said, but Merlin cut him off.

"I'm not." Merlin hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder and picked up the pace, the slap of his shoes against the sidewalk feeling far louder than normal. Suddenly he wished there were more people around, people that he could blend in with, hide behind, use as cover. But it was mid-afternoon on the border between industrial and residential areas and there were only a handful of people wandering through. Them and the blond woman maintaining a steady distance from Merlin no matter how quickly he walked.

"Look, Gaius, I really need to go," Merlin murmured. "Thanks for the info." He restrained himself from looking back at the woman again; the last time she had looked right back at him, a cold little smile on her face. She knew that he knew she was following him, and that didn't bode well at all.

"Merlin, wait! If you need—"

Merlin hung up on him with a curse and immediately scrolled up to Arthur's name instead. He opened a text message and quickly sent off: _Being followed_. He couldn't think of anything else to add. He couldn't ask Arthur for backup if it came to a fight, not when his stalker was undoubtedly ill-intentioned and most likely magical; Arthur had no powers, he wouldn't be able to help, and pulling him into it would only put him in danger. She was gaining on him now, less than a block behind him, so Arthur wouldn't be able to get there fast enough to perform an extraction before she caught up with him.

Really, there was no point in texting Arthur at all, only that Merlin needed someone to know what happened to him. If something happened to him. Which was looking more and more likely by the second.

The next time Merlin threw a glance over his shoulder, the woman was half again closer, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes with that same smirk on her face. A sudden flash of pain brought a name to the forefront of Merlin's mind: Morgause. Morgana had mentioned her in one of his previous memories, so she was definitely connected to the organization. The _terrorist_ organization, the Knights of Medhir.

Merlin almost tripped over his own feet trying to walk even faster and Morgause was close enough behind him for Merlin to hear her snort. _How_ she was keeping up when she was head and shoulders shorter than him and correspondingly had much shorter legs, Merlin didn't know, but he wasn't too focused on figuring it out at the moment. His mind was reeling, running through his options; he didn't have many.

They were still too far away from his house for him to make it, and anyway he didn't doubt that Morgause would just follow him in, even if his mother was there. Collateral damage usually wasn't very high on an assassin's list of priorities, so that was out. There weren't a lot of shops or business in this area, but the ones they passed were busy. Having witnesses might stop Morgause, or it might not, and Merlin wasn't eager to put a host of other people in danger. For all he knew, she might just decide to kill them all to get to him. What was his information worth?

If he couldn't hide, then he would have to run. His legs were longer, he was probably quicker, so he might be able to get away if he really pushed himself and found somewhere to hole up once he was out of her direct line of sight. Running seemed like the best option, especially because she was barely two arms' length behind him now and still closing.

After a shaky breath, Merlin sent up a silent prayer and took off down the street. The thud of his feet against the pavement sent jolts up his entire body and it wasn't long before his lungs were burning, but he could hear the clack of Morgause's boot heels keeping pace with him so slowing down was out of the question. There was a corner up ahead. He took it fast enough that he almost skidded right off his feet and immediately swung himself into an alley in the hopes that she would run past the mouth of it without looking in. No such luck.

He came face to face with the alley's dead end just in time to hear Morgause laugh, the sound echoing off the brick walls, close on either side of them. It made gooseflesh crawl across his arms, cruel and low.

"That was a valiant effort, Merlin," she said, disdainful in her insincerity. "Pointless, but valiant."

Merlin swallowed hard and turned to face her. "Morgause."

One delicate blond eyebrow rose. "So it's true," she said. "You _do_ remember."

"I remember enough." And maybe he shouldn't have said that. Maybe he should have denied it, admitted that he couldn't remember what it was they were so afraid of. But he had never been very good at controlling his mouth in high pressure situations and this was as high pressure a situation as it was possible to be in. So he said: "What are you going to do about it?"

Morgause threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, Merlin!" she said. "Such bravado. I do appreciate your mettle."

"Thanks," Merlin bit out; there was something terribly condescending about Morgause, like she thought everyone around her was a peon not fit to lick her boots, that just rubbed Merlin the wrong way. He got the feeling it always had.

Morgause was idly moving forward, away from the alley mouth and any witnesses thereabouts, backing Merlin against the far wall and watching him like a cat did a particularly succulent-looking mouse. "Such a shame," she said. "To see so much power and talent go to waste."

"Who's to say it's wasted on me?" Merlin said.

"Oh no, you misunderstand," she said. Her right hand came up, flat palm facing out, and began tracing small circles in front of her. "It's not wasted because it's yours." Sparks burst into life, leaping and jumping in the air, coalescing into a glowing ball of energy. "It's wasted because I'm going to kill you now."

Merlin only had a second to process the bluntness of that statement before Morgause launched her attack. He flung himself to the side and the energy ball smashed into the wall, showering him with brick dust. He rolled back onto his feet to see her already readying a second blast.

Without pausing to think, Merlin threw up his hands and shouted, " _Sídrand!_ " His magic flowed out and pooled in front of him, a glittering golden barrier, and Morgause's magic slammed against it with enough force to nearly knock Merlin off his feet. But the shield held strong, the attack dissipating harmlessly.

Merlin stared at his own raised hands, shaken. He didn't know what spell he had used, couldn't even think of what word he had said. It had just happened, like a reflex.

Another blast of magic caught Merlin off guard and his shield wavered, flickering like a bad light bulb. Morgause didn't look nearly as haughty anymore, from what he could see through the golden haze in front of him. She was chanting now, her face drawn into a fierce frown as her hands made complicated gestures that Merlin thought he might be able to recognize if given time. But he didn't have time.

Panicked, he tried to figure out how to shore up his shield, force more magic into it, but he didn't know _how_ and it wasn't _working_ and her chanting was getting _louder_ which couldn't possibly be a good thing. Before he could decide on an alternate course of action, Morgause's spell was complete and slamming into his shield like a battering ram. The shield shattered like glass and Merlin hit the back wall hard, his breath forced out of him in a painful rush. He collapsed to the ground, his breath coming back in gasps and the back of his head throbbing from the rough treatment.

"You may be remembering some things, Merlin," Morgause said, "but you've still forgotten what's really important. You're a mere shadow of what you were."

On some buried instinct, Merlin reached out a hand, clamped down on air, and _yanked_. Morgause's feet were pulled out from under her, sending her sprawling across the ground. Merlin took the opportunity to scramble to his feet again. His heart was pounding so hard that he could hear the rushing of blood in his ears, compounded by the pulse of magic through his veins. It was hot, burning hot, and pushing at his skin, straining to burst forth. Merlin almost staggered under the pressure, distracted for a moment by how difficult it was to keep it restrained.

Something hit Merlin in the back of the knee and he pitched forward, gouging his palms as he caught himself on the rough asphalt. A twinge of his magic warned him and he rolled to the side just as a heavy chunk of debris from the wrecked back wall came crashing down where he had been. Before he had even come to a full stop, Morgause's booted foot was on his chest, pressing him down and pinning him in place.

With her previously immaculate hair now flying about her face, her lips pulled back in a snarl, and her eyes flashing a bright gold, she looked almost feral and Merlin could suddenly understand why those without magic were frightened of those with it. She loomed over him, her spiky boot heel driving painfully into his ribs.

"You've always been more trouble than you're worth," she said. "I warned Nimueh that you would be a liability, but she didn't listen. But I can kill you now."

Morgause raised her hand high and Merlin could feel the power gathering there even if he couldn't see it this time. He tried to throw her off, but she was damn strong for such a slight woman, and he had no leverage in his position. Almost before he even realized he was doing it, he was calling his magic forth, letting it bubble to the surface and fill him up until his eyes burned with the power. He shoved forward with all his might and cried, " _Ástríce!_ "

Morgause went flying ten feet in the air to crash into the wall and then slumped at the base of it, but Merlin barely had time to get his feet under him before she was up again. Screaming with inarticulate rage, she sent a jet of flame roaring toward him, bright red and gold. The heat of it filled the small alleyway and the burn in Merlin's veins leapt up to meet it head on. Without any idea of how he did it, Merlin reached out, grabbed hold of Morgause's spell, and wrestled control of it away from her. A sharp gesture of his hand sent it flying back toward her, and she was almost too startled to get her shield up in time.

In the moment between acting and actually comprehending what exactly he had just done, Morgause was there again, this time physically tackling him to the ground. Her hands, scalding with magic, wrapped around his throat like a vice. Merlin struggled but, for all his apparent magical dueling ability, he was still a twig-thin teenager and he was no match for an obviously well-trained fighter. The lack of oxygen made him lightheaded and set his entire skull to throbbing, pressure building until he thought he might explode.

His vision flickered, going dark and fuzzy around the edges in a familiar and not-asphyxiation-related way, and Merlin had a moment of intense panic; he couldn't have a flashback here and now, while he was fighting for his life and losing. If he blacked out now, he would likely be dead before he came out of it.

None of that stopped him from going under.

But the memory was a short one, no more than a few seconds. Edwin's scarred face twisted into something that approximated a smile, a reassuring hand on Merlin's shoulder. " _It's not a pretty spell, or a nice one, but it is a_ useful _one. Rather blunt, of course, but sometimes brute force can be more effective than anything else. If you're ever truly pressed, just say the word and push._ "

He couldn't say the word properly now, not with his larynx being forced shut and no air left in his lungs, but he could still push. Releasing his futile hold on Morgause's wrists, Merlin mouthed the word " _Tóbrice_ " and drove his hand as hard as he couldn't into Morgause's chest.

The rush of magic was unlike anything he had ever felt before. Morgause was blasted off of him and thrown to the side. This time, she didn't get up.

Merlin was left gasping, coughing, trying to force much-needed air through his abused throat to his starved lungs. His magic tingled in his palms and he pressed them to his throat, some buried memory of a healing spell rushing forth to soothe the pain and reduce the swelling. It took several minutes for his breathing to stabilize and his head to stop spinning dizzily, and then he just lay there for a moment longer, unable to bring himself to move.

He had to, though. He didn't think that anyone had seen them or been disturbed by the noise, but it was only a matter of time before someone wandered past and saw the wreckage their fight had caused. Police would be called, people would swarm the scene, and very bad things would happen if he were caught there. So he pushed himself carefully upright, struggling to stand on legs, shaky with leftover adrenaline, that didn't want to function anymore.

He turned to leave, but realized that he didn't have his backpack anymore. It had been on his shoulder when he had turned into the alley, but it was gone. When had he lost it? He needed that backpack, he found himself thinking, because it had all of his homework and textbooks in it. Not to mention Gwen's biology notes and some of Arthur's history notes too. Every expansion of his ribs hurt and something wet and sticky was dripping into his left eye, but he couldn't leave without his backpack. That seemed very important for some reason, absolutely paramount. It was either sift through the rubble in search of his wayward backpack or acknowledge how that rubble had come to be, and he didn't want to do the latter just yet.

It took him several minutes of digging to come up with the offending bag, hidden under a slab of asphalt that had been blasted out of the ground at some point and covered in dust. There was a dark splotch on it that might have been blood and Merlin had to think for a bit before he realized that it was probably his. He stood there, staring blankly at that blood while his thoughts short-circuited, for a long while. Then she caught his eye.

Morgause was a few feet away. Her blond curls were spread out across the ground, bright and stark and sticky-red near the scalp. Her leather jacket had scorch marks on the sleeves, black and sooty. Her face was pale and graying, her blue eyes wide open and glassy-blank. There was a trail of dark blood leaking from the corner of her mouth down into her hairline. There was something wrong with her chest, besides the fact that it wasn't moving, wasn't rising and falling with her breath because she wasn't breathing. It was sunken in instead, concave, broken.

Merlin was buried so deep in his shock that the physical pain of an impending memory didn't even register. The darkness rushed up to take him and he didn't fight it.

 _Merlin woke with that distinct flavor of groggy disorientation that only came after a sleeping spell. He barely had time to register the fact that he was lying on the ground, his face pressed into sparse grass and damp earth, before he was being dragged upward. It was when he tried to steady himself and found that he couldn't that he realized his hands were bound behind his back. Not with rope, but with magic._

 _The panic was immediate. His first instinct was to lash out with magic, to knock them all down and give himself time to get away, but the hum of his magic was strangely muted, buried much deeper than it usually was. His attempt to draw it forward was met with a sluggish resistance. They had done something to him, to his magic. Through the haze of hysteria, Merlin felt a fierce rush of pride and satisfaction at the fact that they felt the need to drug him into submission for this, even with—his eyes swept around him, taking in the scene—four adult practitioners standing guard._

 _He ended up on his knees, a rough hand in his hair yanking his head up. It was the middle of the night; his mother probably didn't even know he wasn't in the house anymore. What would she do when they found his body? She'd be devastated._

" _I'm disappointed in you, Merlin."_

 _That voice was like a drop of ice in his stomach, even worse because until recently he had trusted it implicitly. He tried to turn, to look toward where the voice was circling around behind him, but the hand in his hair kept him where he was._

 _His magic wasn't responding, he was bound and at their mercy, there was little he could do to escape. Which meant there was nothing to lose by playing dumb._

" _What is this?" he asked, not having to try very hard to sound frightened. "Nimueh, what's going on?"_

 _His head was pulled back harder, straining his neck, and Julius Borden was hissing in his ear. "You know exactly what's going on, you little traitor!"_

 _Merlin tried to headbutt him, but he couldn't get the proper leverage. Borden released him with a shove and a scoff as Nimueh came around to stand in front of him, her arms crossed over her chest. She wasted a moment staring down her nose at him and Merlin cursed himself for being susceptible to the intimidation tactic. He bit down on his tongue to keep himself from word-vomiting; it wouldn't do him any good at this point._

" _It's a pity," Nimueh said eventually. "To let all those months of training go to waste. You could have been something truly great, Merlin."_

" _I've seen your idea of great, Nimueh," Merlin said. "And I want no part in it."_

 _A scoff sounded over Merlin's shoulder, somehow sharp and breathy at once, and Merlin knew that Morgause was one of those watching their perimeter. Nimueh frowned at him, red lips pulling delicately downward as she paced around him._

" _I had hoped you would understand the importance of our mission," she said. "Like dear Mordred. So eager to be of use. He may not have_ your _gift, but he'll do well enough."_

 _Merlin went cold all over. "Mordred can't—" he stammered. "He could never—"_

 _Nimueh laughed. "Did you really think you were that special that we couldn't do it without you? Please, Merlin." She leaned down in front of him, blue eyes sparking with gold. "When a cause is right, it will always find a way."_

" _What you're planning isn't right," Merlin spat._

 _Nimueh's smirk only widened. "Morgana disagrees with you."_

 _Morgana, of course. She was the only person he had told, the only way they could have known what he was going to do._

" _Morgana was kind enough to inform me of the threat to our plans," Nimueh said casually, as if this wasn't a scene straight out of a mafia film and also probably the final moments of Merlin's brief and unfortunate life. "She was very distressed, I'll have you know."_

" _If you're going to kill me, then_ do it _," Merlin growled. A heavy hand collided with the side of his head, sending his ears ringing, and Merlin instinctively reached for his magic again. It skittered away from his grasp, useless and frustrating and altogether terrifying._

 _Nimueh gave an elegant snort. "We're not going to kill you, Merlin," she drawled. "We are not without mercy. Morgana is a very promising recruit who happens to be in a very advantageous position. She begged for us to spare your life, and there was no reason to deny her."_

 _Merlin stared up at her, lost now that the script had been changed._

" _We're not going to kill you," she repeated, slowly, clearly, and somewhat tauntingly as she sauntered forward to loom over him. "But we can't let you interfere. You know too much." She reached out to place a hand on his forehead. "But I can change that."_

 _Merlin tried to jerk his head back and out of her range, fighting to escape no matter how futile he knew the effort was, but Borden was there again. One hand gripped tight into his hair and the other clamped down on his jaw, unrelenting pressure keeping him right where Nimueh wanted him._

 _Sickly yellow light, pain, and then darkness._


	7. Chapter 7

The sound of water ringing against the bottom of his kitchen sink is what finally got through to him. Merlin simply looked up to find himself standing in the kitchen of his own house, an empty glass in hand. It took him a few seconds to process his new surroundings, to realize that he had apparently walked all the way home. He didn't remember any of it, not even if anyone had seen him leaving the scene of the fight. He couldn't think of anything past standing over Morgause's broken body in the alleyway and knowing that he had—

Merlin could barely hold onto the glass, the bottom of it clanging loudly against the sink's edge as he tried to maneuver it under the tap with a badly shaking hand. A badly shaking hand that was coated with dirt and had scraped knuckles and a splatter of crusted brown-red across the back. Merlin stared at it until the water overflowed and spilled across his fingers. He let the glass fall and instead stuck both hands under the spray, heedless of his long sleeves falling down around his wrists. It stung his battered knuckles to scrub so hard but the water was grey and pink and _wrong_ against the shiny metal and Merlin knew it would run clean again if he scrubbed hard enough.

A crashing sound had him whirling around in a panic, a blast of magic already burning in his palm and making the water there hiss and evaporate. But it wasn't another assassin come to try their luck; it was Arthur, skidding to a stop in the doorway. He looked panicked, almost frantic in his hurried search, but he jerked back instinctively at seeing Merlin's aggressive stance, barely catching himself on the door frame.

"Jesus, Merlin, what the _fuck_?" he shouted, wide-eyed and not-quite-afraid.

The magic was slow to dissipate even once he registered the intrusion as non-threatening. The crash must have been the front door being thrown open, Merlin realized, and there was no attack coming. He was safe. He was with a friend.

He hadn't even fully lowered his hand before it flew to his head, pain flaring. _Morgana pounced on him from behind, a tackle-hug that nearly sent them both tumbling to the floor. They laughed until Alvarr sent them a quelling look and put new spellbooks in their hands._

"Merlin!"

Arthur was suddenly right there, a hand on his shoulder and the other turning his face one way and then the other. Merlin batted him away, disoriented and clumsy with shock.

"Stop that," Arthur gritted out, continuing his examination regardless of Merlin's feeble struggle. "You text me that you're being followed, don't answer your phone six times in a row, and then I find you covered in blood and looking like death warmed over. Do you have _any_ idea how worried I've been? What the hell happened?"

Arthur didn't sound worried; he sounded angry. But Merlin knew Arthur well enough to know that angry was his version of scared, his way of covering for vulnerability. When he hadn't responded, Arthur had been afraid that Merlin was hurt or kidnapped or dead. But he wasn't, he wasn't the one who was dead, that was—

 _Morgause tugged at Merlin's wrist, adjusting his stance with only a hint of impatience, and directed him toward the target. "Now destroy it," she said, and fire pooled easily in Merlin's hand._

Merlin jerked away from Arthur's hands. His backpack bounced against his shoulder, the ache of impact letting him know exactly how many bruises were already forming there. He swung it around to rest on the little round breakfast table, dumping it over and straightening the papers that fell out as if that would make them less singed and smoke-blackened. "Got ambushed," he said. "Had to fight." His throat felt raw and swollen and he was sure to have a ring of hand-shaped bruises there too before long.

"Ambushed?" Arthur repeated faintly. "By whom? Merlin, what _happened_?"

"Morgause," Merlin forced out, fighting against a sudden wave of nausea. His shirt rode up his back as he reached for a fallen textbook, the fabric cold and sticky with blood. He wasn't entirely sure whose it was. _"Galacne," Edwin said, the word tripping easily off his tongue, and the scrape on Merlin's elbow closed up and faded away without a trace._

"Damn it, Merlin, will you fucking _talk_ to me?" Arthur said, clutching at Merlin's shoulder. "You don't get to shut me out like this, not anymore!"

Merlin felt dizzy, lightheaded in a way that was strangely contradictory to the insistent pressure of more memories forcing their way back into his skull. Distantly he noticed that he was breathing too fast, that his chest was burning and he was swaying on his feet. _"Knights are meant to fight, Merlin, not to hide." Nimueh's blood red lips curled up into a smile and sharp-nailed fingers lay gently on his shoulder. "If we want a better world for our kind, we must be prepared to make it ourselves."_

Over the course of the memory flicker, Arthur had apparently sat Merlin down in one of the rickety chairs and pushed his head between his knees. Merlin gasped for air and clawed at his chest and wondered if he would really survive four assassination attempts only to be killed by a panic attack. But the episode didn't last forever, no matter that it felt like it, and he found himself even more utterly exhausted than before.

Arthur was rubbing at his back, making vague soothing noises, and Merlin's eyes burned not with magic but with tears. The damning words were on the tip of his tongue, teetering there, but to let them fall might ruin this, might make Arthur afraid to touch him again, might send Arthur running the way nothing else had so far. Maybe if he just didn't say it, then he could pretend it hadn't happened. He could lie and no one would ever have to know what he had done.

But Arthur deserved better than that. Arthur had been his best friend for years, the best friend a person could ever ask for. And even now, even after Merlin had fucked up so badly, Arthur was still here for him when he truly needed him. Arthur deserved so much better than to be lied to again. Even if it destroyed them completely, Merlin had to tell him the truth this time. He owed him that much.

"What happened with the fight, Merlin?" Arthur asked, hushed as if that would make the answer easier to give. "Please talk to me. I mean, is Morgause going to track you down again? Are you still in danger?"

Merlin fought down a laugh; he had the feeling that he wouldn't be able to stop if he started. "No," he choked out. "No, she won't be coming for me again."

Arthur let out a gusty sigh full of relief that Merlin was coherent enough to form words. "Why not?" he asked.

"Because she's dead."

The stunned silence that followed those words felt like a condemnation, but Arthur's hand was still warm and heavy on the back of his neck, not snatched away in horror like Merlin had expected. He wasn't saying anything though, wasn't reacting at all. The empty weight of the moment pressed against Merlin's chest, forcing words past his lips before he had decided to say them.

"She was following me," he said, syllables tripping over each other in their haste to be heard. "She chased me, backed me into a corner. She was going to kill me, she said so! She said—and I didn't, I didn't _mean_ to, I didn't—It wasn't on purpose, I just—"

His hands were fisted into Arthur's shirt, shaking again and white-knuckled and when had Arthur come around in front of him?

"It all happened so fast, and then she was just—I didn't mean to, I swear, I—"

Merlin's voice was muffled now, his face pressed into Arthur's stomach as if he could hide there and never come out. Arthur's arms were around him, pulling him close and holding him there tight enough to hurt. Merlin thought maybe Arthur was saying something, his voice rough and low, but Merlin could barely bear it over his own ragged breathing, the pounding of blood in his ears and the hitching of sobs in his chest. He just tightened his hold on Arthur's shirt and cried for the fact that he couldn't feel safe even there, in his own home, in the arms of the person he cared most about in the world.

And maybe he didn't deserve to. Maybe he had earned this. Maybe the anti-magic lobbyists were right and his power had corrupted him, dirtied his soul with the impulse for violence and murder. If he had just listened to Gaius from the start, if he had kept his distance from Borden and Alvarr and their pretty words, then none of this would have happened. He would never have known how to fight like that, how to _kill_ like that, so _easily_. They had given him that instinct. They had made him like this.

" _Come on, Alvarr, you can do better than that!" Merlin called out. Alvarr flicked him off from where he lay a few meters away, flat on his back, and Merlin laughed. Alvarr dragged himself upright again with a groan._

" _You're too good at this, kid," he chuckled. "You've got all the right instincts and all the natural talent. But you don't know everything yet."_

 _Something yanked Merlin's feet out from under him and he went down with a crash. He was up again in an instant, breathless and eager. "Oh, you've got to teach me that!"_

Merlin gritted his teeth against a howl of frustration as the flicker faded, not taking half the pain with it. These people had taught him, trained him not only in fighting but in healing and theory and spell-crafting, and then had taken all of the knowledge away and left only the worst of it behind, ingrained in him. This was _their fault_ , every last bit of it. They had manipulated him from the start and then they had fucked with his mind outright, violated and warped it with the very magic they strove so hard to champion, and Merlin's own magic throbbed inside him with the need for release.

He clamped down on it before it could reach the surface and burn holes in Arthur's shirt where Merlin was still clutching at it. He forced his fingers to loosen, wiping furiously at his wet face. They may have made a killer out of him but they would not make him _weak_ , they would not make him afraid. And they would not make him complicit in any more of their crimes.

"I have to stop them."

"What?" Arthur asked, taken aback by Merlin's thunderous expression. He stepped back out of Merlin's reach again, hands fluttering uncertainly for a moment before reaching up to scrub across his own haggard face. "Wait, what do you mean?"

"Nimueh," Merlin said. "All of them. The Knights of Medhir. I talked to Gaius, he said they're a—"

"The Knights of Medhir?" Arthur said, alarmed. "They're—they're a _terrorist cell_ , Merlin! My father's talked about them before, said they were violent extremists and should be put down for the sake of the country's security. He's passed legislation against them. Are you telling me you managed to get recruited by a terrorist cell and didn't realize?"

"They didn't exactly advertise it that way," Merlin snapped. "There were no banners on the walls proclaiming their intent to blow up Parliament."

Arthur paled. "Is that what they—" he stammered, but Merlin shook his head.

"No, of course not," he said, then reconsidered. "Well, I don't know, really," he huffed instead. "But whatever it is, I have to stop it. If they're still coming after me, then that means I still have time to stop it."

"Stop it? Merlin, how the hell do you intend to do that?"

 _Uniform green, a thick wall of leaves broken only by a white sign, weathered and brown around the edges. "Nemeth Gardens, Topiary Maze" in purple letters. "Closed to the public" in black. Merlin ignored the sign and placed a hand on the hedge a meter to the right. The leaves rustled and shifted, opening to let him through and creeping shut behind him._

Merlin shook the image from his head and said, "I'll go straight to her."

"Her?" Arthur said. "You mean this Nimueh?"

"Yes." Merlin pushed himself to his feet, halfway to the door by the time Arthur pulled him to a stop.

"Are you out of your damn mind?" Arthur hissed. "You are _not_ going to just waltz up to a dangerous terrorist and—and—and do _what_? What are you even intending to do if you find her?"

"Whatever I have to do to keep her from following through with her plans," Merlin said, and he meant it. He already had blood on his hands, blood that _she_ had put there. It was either fight back or wait to be taken out of the equation, so he might as well go all in. He had nothing left to lose at this point.

Arthur let out a strangled noise, looking a second away from tearing his hair out. "You don't even know what her plans _are_!"

"That doesn't matter!" Merlin shouted back. "They were bad enough that I felt the need to intervene before. That hasn't changed just because I don't remember the specifics. I still have to do something."

"If you would be kind enough to remember, Merlin," Arthur said with forced patience, "your original intention was to go to the police with the information and let _them_ intervene. I get why you can't tell them everything, I do, but if you're so damned determined then there has to be a way to—"

" _I lost my father to those stupid laws," Mordred said, idly kicking his toe against the leg of Merlin's chair. "He confessed to everything, even the things he hadn't done, just to keep their attention off of me." He sniffed, wiped at his nose, and Merlin squeezed his shoulder for want of any other comfort to offer him. "I still remember his face when they dragged him away."_

Merlin clutched at his aching head, fighting not to sway where he stood. "You want me to sit in an interrogation room like this?" he demanded, pointing at his own eyes, still flickering gold with the aftereffects of the memory. "Even if I managed to censor my own involvement in everything, there's no way I can hide this when I can't control it. And once my magic comes out, then everything does. And I'm not just some magical kid who made bad choices anymore, Arthur. I don't just have magic; I've studied it, I've actively pursued it, and I've used it to cause harm. I've _killed_ with it, Arthur. There's no coming back from that."

"It was in self-defense," Arthur argued, stubborn as always in his defense of what was _right_ , as if that meant a damn thing in the real world. "It was justifiable, surely they would understand that."

Merlin scoffed. "Admitting to that would be signing my own death warrant," he said grimly. "Admitting to any of it, really. No, I have to take care of this myself."

Arthur threw up his hands with another of those intensely aggravated noises, turning away from Merlin. He whirled back around in a second though, apparently needing to have Merlin in his sight to verify that he wasn't doing anything stupid just yet. "Alright. Okay, fine," he said with a sniff. "You'll do it yourself. How? How will you find her and what will you do once you have?"

" _We can't let you interfere. You know too much." A hand on his forehead, magic already gathered there to scald him. "But I can change that."_

"I'll fight her if I have to," Merlin said. He flexed his hands, curled them into fists at his sides, feeling the burn in them. "She's the one who wiped my memories, but her spell isn't holding. My magic is stronger than hers; I can overpower her."

"Raw strength isn't all there is to a fight," Arthur pointed out. "She's got years of experience and training on you, Merlin, you're going to get yourself killed."

"And not doing anything will get other people killed!"

"Are you sure of that?" Arthur asked.

"Are you willing to risk it?" Merlin shot back. That gave Arthur pause. "If I don't do this," Merlin said, pointing a trembling finger toward the door, toward the vague reality of what he intended to do, what he _needed_ to do. "If I don't at least try, and we hear on the news in a week or a month that the Knights of Medhir actually did blow up Parliament and kill a dozen people, will you be able to live with yourself? Because I won't. And not just because one of her cronies will get me out of the way first."

Arthur didn't answer for a long moment, fighting with himself. Merlin stood his ground. He had spent his entire life so far hiding what he could do, cowering in the shadows, letting opportunities to help and do good pass him by because using his power even benevolently was against the law. But this wasn't something he could let pass. He couldn't stand by and let whatever this was happen, not when he had the power and, if not _all_ the knowledge, then at least enough to prevent it. If they thought they could shut him up, get him out of the way, then they had another damn thing coming to them.

"Merlin," Arthur said, and his voice broke. He stretched out a hand like he might take hold of Merlin, might pull him close and wrap him up in his arms again, but then he let it fall. "Merlin, it's too dangerous. I can't—I can't lose you to this."

Merlin's breath caught in his throat and the burn of magic in his blood was chased away by the shiver down his spine. In all the years they had known each other, he had never seen Arthur look like this, like he was torn open. His eyes were red-rimmed and shiny, his mouth set in a tight line, jaw clenched and chin raised as if daring anyone to call him out on his tears. Merlin ached to soothe them away, to comfort Arthur as Arthur had him, to do anything that would take the boldly terrified look off a face that was never meant to hold such fear, but he couldn't. That wasn't his right, it never had been, and—

" _How could you do that? How could you justify it to yourself?"_

" _Arthur, it was never like—"_

" _How could you let me_ say _it, Merlin?"_

—now wasn't the time. Merlin squeezed his eyes shut, the clash of his own magic against Nimueh's sending starbursts of pain ricocheting through him yet again. This twisted, complicated _thing_ with Arthur would have to wait. There were more important matters, truly life or death matters, to take care of and if he survived those, then he could think on his feelings and what, if anything, Arthur felt in return.

"I have to do this," he said, eyes still closed so that he didn't have to see Arthur's face. "I'll go to the maze; that's the center of it all, she's sure to turn up there soon."

"Then I'm coming with you."

Merlin's eyes snapped open now. "What? No!"

But Arthur had his most stubborn of stubborn faces on, the one that had always meant that he would rather shove Morgana over, wrestle for half an hour, and sit on her head rather than give up the television remote even though his programme was already over. "I'm coming with you and that's final," he said with all the authoritativeness of a king to his subject.

" _Fuck_ no!" Merlin said, flailing in his vehemence. "Do you have any idea how dangerous this is going to be?"

"Exactly," Arthur said, "and if you insist on doing dangerous things, then you need someone to watch your back."

"I do not need—"

 _The blue-white glow flared so brightly that it should have hurt his eyes, and yet he felt no need to look away. Instead he reached out to touch, to sink his hand into the midst of the light and feel it glide along his skin like the brush of feathers. It was electrifying._

"—lin? Merlin?"

Arthur was much closer than he had been a second ago and Merlin jerked back in surprise. Arthur caught him by the shoulders with a huff and said, "This is what I mean!"

Merlin shrugged him off. "What?"

"You're not exactly at the top of your game right now," Arthur said. "Your memory flashes are debilitating, and you've already admitted that you can't control them. What happens if you blank out like that in the middle of a fight? I need to be there to cover you when that happens."

"Cover me how? What can you do against magic, Arthur?" Merlin asked.

"Well, I've never heard of a bullet-proof sorcerer, so there's that."

Merlin stared at him. "You want to bring a gun to a magic fight?" he asked flatly. "That's like the start to a bad joke. Where would you even get one?"

"You know my dad has several," Arthur said. "He's trained me how to use them and I snuck a peek at the combination for the gunlocker. I'll have you know I'm a damn good shot."

Merlin stared a bit more, then shook his head. "No," he said again. "No, no, this is _way_ too dangerous. There is no way I am dragging you into—"

" _Oh, Merlin," Julius chuckled. "We can teach you magic the likes of which you would never have dreamed of before."_

Arthur steadied him, an anchor as the world flickered in and out around him, and Merlin hated how easy it was to lean on that strength, how much he needed it right now.

"Merlin," Arthur said, low and insistent. "You need my help. And you've already told me where you're going. You know damn well that if you try and leave me behind, I will be right on your heels anyway and there's not a damn thing you can do about it."

"I could probably magic you to the ceiling if I really wanted to," Merlin said, but the threat lacked heat and they both knew it.

Arthur smirked at him, something cocky and teasing that he hadn't seen in weeks, and squeezed his shoulder. "You wouldn't dare."

Merlin rolled his eyes instead of admitting that, no, he really wouldn't. As much as the thought of Arthur in danger terrified him, he could at least admit to himself how much he wanted to have Arthur by his side. He always wanted Arthur at his side.

"Come on," Arthur said. "We'll go by my place and steal one of my dad's guns, then we'll find that maze you keep going on about and confront public enemy number one." He gave Merlin a once-over and added, "And we'll stop to eat on the way; you look like you're about to fall over."

Merlin couldn't bring himself to protest, not with Arthur's hand warm and reassuring on the back of his neck.


	8. Chapter 8

Nemeth Gardens was only a few minutes out of town, barely a kilometer away from the open field Merlin had been found in. The long winding road there felt familiar even though he had no explicit memory of ever driving it before. He knew the turn-off without consulting the sat-nav, which earned him a sharp sidelong look from Arthur to which he could only shrug.

The barrier between his conscious mind and his wiped memories was weakening, worn thin and riddled with holes his own magic had managed to drill through. It was only a matter of time before it broke completely, but with the situation being what it was, they didn't have the time to wait for that. Merlin had already evaded Nimueh's highest lieutenants and he didn't want to know how long it would take for the ones who survived to try their hands again. He might not be so lucky in Round 2.

The car park for the maze was empty; unsurprising considering it had closed down over a year ago. It looked just as it had in Merlin's recovered memory, the sign on a blank, featureless stretch of leaves. Merlin ignored Arthur's frown of confusion at the lack of a visible entrance and instead followed his instinct to a patch of greenery seemingly no different from the rest. It thrummed with magic as soon as he touched it, though, and the branches shifted and gave way before him.

Arthur cleared his throat, twice. "Well then," he said gruffly. "At least we know we're in the right place." He checked over his gun one more time, counting the rounds and flicking the safety off and on again to be sure, before tucking it into his waistband at the small of his back.

He gave a grim sort of smile, but Merlin couldn't bring himself to return it, not when Arthur was following him into danger with a gun in hand and intending to use it. He sent up a prayer to every god he knew of that Arthur wouldn't have to, that one of them would be able to come out of this with his hands clean. But Merlin wasn't naive enough to expect such a favourable outcome. They would be lucky to come out of it alive.

The hedge rustled shut behind them once they had stepped through the gap, trapping them in the dappled twilight of what little sun could slant over the tops of the high walls. Without having to spare a thought on it, Merlin's feet led him to the right, and Arthur followed without a word.

Everything felt strangely muffled, dampened and cut off from the outside world. There was no rumble of traffic from the road, no bird calls or buzz of insects, nothing but their own footfalls and the shoosh of a breeze through the omnipresent leaves. The almost-silence made Merlin feel as though his ears were stuffed with cotton, or maybe like he was underwater.

A left turn, a right, a middle fork, and another leafy magical gateway that opened at Merlin's touch. The feeling of being submerged intensified with every step, a persistent sensation of ebb and flow that had Merlin swaying with its rhythm. But it wasn't water; it was magic. The further they walked, the stronger the feeling became. The maze was soaked in magic, saturated with it, enough to make Merlin's head spin. He imagined this was what being drunk felt like, heady and addictive.

A glance behind told him that Arthur wasn't experiencing the same dizzy rush. His eyes were clear and sharp, watching their surroundings with all the alertness of a bird of prey. Seeing his strange look, Arthur bumped his shoulder, brow furrowed, and said, "You alright?"

Merlin nodded absently and led the way down another identical path, dragged along by the undertow of power that tickled and danced along his skin. He had a feeling that, even if he hadn't had the memory of previous visits here, he would have been able to find what he was looking for from that _pull_ alone. It was in the center of the maze, the source of that power, and it called to him like a siren song, full of sweet promise.

A sudden upsurge of that magic, dangerously strong, hit him like a headrush and he stumbled sideways.

Arthur's hand clamped down on his arm. "Merlin? What is it? Another memory?"

Merlin shook his head, though the throb at the base of his skull warned him that one wasn't far away. "No, it's not—" It hit him again, less like a natural current and more deliberate, like the splash of a stone and ripples in a pond. "Someone's here."

"How do you know?"

"I can sense it," Merlin said dully, distracted by the assault on a sense he wasn't used to using. "Someone's at the center of the maze. They're using it."

"Using what?" Arthur asked, baffled.

"I don't—I'm not sure." The prickling heat was crawling upward now, clawing at Merlin, and he grabbed hold of Arthur to steady himself as he was overcome.

 _The blue-white glow flared so brightly that it should have hurt his eyes, and yet he felt no need to look away. Instead he reached out to touch, to sink his hand into the midst of the light and feel it glide along his skin like the brush of feathers. It was electrifying, even as the surface of the crystal itself was cold and hard, and the charge rushed through his entire body with a strength that made him stagger._

" _That's right, Merlin," came Nimueh's encouraging voice. "Open yourself to it, let it fill up all the dark places inside you. That's where your true strength can be found. Let the crystal call it forth."_

 _He withstood a few moments longer before he yanked his hand away, winded and shaking from the rush. He could still feel the crystal's power sparking through him like static, making the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end. Bracing himself on his knees, he panted for breath even though he sort of felt like whooping with joy. Even exhausted as he was, he had never felt more alive._

 _A gasp drew his attention to where Mordred stood, now engulfed by that same glow. His eyes were wide and unseeing, shining a bright and uninterrupted gold. He only lasted a few seconds before he began to shake. Nimueh clucked chidingly and reached out to pull him away._

" _Careful, Mordred," she said. "The Crystal of Neahtid's power is not to be underestimated. For all that it may help one reach their full potential, it can also prove to be too much for some. Practice and patience are needed if you wish to use such an artefact. And I intend for you both to make good use of it."_

" _For what?" Merlin asked, his eye drawn back to the glittering planes of the crystal like a moth to flame. "What else does it do?"_

 _Nimueh smiled at him, bright and eager. "This crystal holds the power of Time itself," she said, reverence in every word. "Hewn from the Crystal Cave in which magic itself was born, this crystal contains the knowledge of everything: past, present, and future."_

" _Everything?" Mordred asked, barely a whisper._

 _Nimueh stepped up to the crystal herself, passing a delicate hand over its surface. The light flared up at her command and then dimmed again, and when the two boys leaned over to look, they saw not cloudy white stone but colorful images, moving like a film just under the surface. Morgause was at a long table, bent over a book she was sharing with Morgana. They were smiling, animated and passionate in their discussion._

" _The present," Nimueh said. A wave of her hand sent the images swirling into nothingness to be replaced by another, this time Merlin himself at the crystal, lit up with power. "The near past," she said. Another wave, and the crystal went dark._

" _Few can wield this crystal," she said, solemn as she eyed them both. "Not many possess the strength to channel such power. For most it would be too much and they would be overcome. But you." She smiled again, and her blue eyes were steady on Merlin's, though she spoke to them both. "You have a gift."_

" _We could see the future?" Mordred asked, disbelieving._

 _Nimueh's gaze flicked to him before returning to Merlin. Something about that look made Merlin shiver, made him feel like a mouse before a hawk. He let out a soft sigh of relief when she finally released him to turn back to her other protege._

" _You could," she allowed. "You both are in possession of power far superior to the average sorcerer, more than enough to access the past and the present. The future, though, is harder. To navigate the troubled waters of what can be and what will be is fraught with peril. You have that potential, Mordred," she said. "But I cannot say yet how adept you will be. It may be that you can see only a short while into the future, or you may catch only glimpses. You may not have the strength to choose what you see, taking only what is offered to you. It is still more than most will ever achieve."_

 _Merlin found himself pinned by her stare once more._

" _But your gifts, Merlin, are truly extraordinary," she told him. "With power like yours, there is no limit to what you may achieve. If we work together, Merlin, there is nothing beyond our reach."_

 _Merlin swallowed hard. The throb of the crystal's magic, the intense_ call _of it, was hypnotising. The whole of Time at his fingertips, all knowledge of what was and what would be, there for the taking. Mordred was wide-eyed and awestruck, looking at Nimueh with something close to worship on his face, but she only had eyes for Merlin. He should be flattered, should be just as eager to learn from her, but unease sat heavy in his stomach._

 _Nimueh led his hand back to the crystal's surface and the feeling was chased away by a rush of power more intoxicating than anything he had ever imagined._

"Merlin? Alright there, Merls?" Arthur was saying as the vision faded away. It sounded like he may have said it more than once.

Merlin pressed his hands over his face, blocking the dimming light from attacking his eyes before the pain could fade; it was so much more intense with a full immersive memory than the ever-increasing flickers, so much more all-consuming. He leaned on Arthur, letting Arthur take his weight for a minute before he could stand straight again.

"It's a crystal," he told Arthur. "At the center of the maze. A magical crystal that can show you the future. It's why my magic is so much stronger than I remember. It's what Nimueh was personally training me to use, me and Mordred both."

"For fuck's sake," Arthur said, incredulous and utterly fed up. "She can see the fucking _future_?"

"Apparently I had a real knack for it," Merlin said, starting down a path to the left. "I think—" He closed his eyes a moment, straining against the barrier in his mind, poking at the rapidly-filling hole there, searching for a way past it. "I was better at it than Nimueh," he came out with, no specific memory surfacing but somehow sure of it anyway. "That's why she wanted to train me with the crystal in the first place, because I could do something with it that she couldn't."

"And Mordred?" Arthur asked from his place at Merlin's shoulder.

"The backup plan," Merlin said grimly. The air was swimming with magic, thick and cloying and dragging him on. It surged up around him, a static charge like an impending lightning strike, and Merlin picked up the pace. "And I think he's here right now."

"Whoa, wait," Arthur cried, pulling Merlin to an abrupt stop. "If he's using the crystal now, does that mean the big plan is in action? You came here for Nimueh, is she here too?"

"It doesn't matter."

Arthur tightened his hold, refusing to let him pass. "Of course it matters! How many people do you expect to fight at once?"

"As many as I have to," Merlin growled. "Whatever Mordred and Nimueh are doing, I'm going to put a stop to it. You can come with me or you can go home, Arthur, but I'm going on and there is nothing you can do to stop me."

They held each other's eyes for a long suspended moment, toe to toe and neither of them willing to step down. And then Merlin was being pushed backward, colliding with the hedge, and Arthur was in his space, pressing against him, _kissing him—_

 _The kiss came out of nowhere, just a quick press of lips over an open trigonometry textbook on Arthur's kitchen table. The both seemed equally stunned by it, but the awkward silence dissolved into shy smiles and laughs of relief and a second tentative touch of lips, new and different and altogether welcome._

—and Merlin was kissing him back, opening to him with a small, desperate noise. The wet slide of Arthur's mouth against his was foreign and familiar all at once, a contradiction that made Merlin's fucked up head spin even more. But with his fingers tangled in the hair at Arthur's nape, he felt more anchored than he had in weeks, grounded and secure and very nearly safe. He never wanted to let go.

When they finally broke apart, it was only far enough to gasp for breath against each other's lips. They leaned into each other, foreheads pressed together, warm and close and more intimate than Merlin remembered them being.

"God, I've missed that," Arthur whispered, more to himself than anything else, the words barely a puff of breath against Merlin's cheek.

Merlin couldn't help but frown. Loathe as he was to break the moment, this perfect moment that he had never dared to hope for, that statement needed addressing. "I don't understand."

Arthur froze, going tense in Merlin's embrace, but he didn't pull away. After a painfully indecisive moment, he slumped against Merlin fully like a puppet with cut strings, burying his face in the crook of Merlin's neck. Merlin's hands came up to rest on his shoulders like they belonged there, like he had done it a hundred times before.

"I thought I could forget," Arthur said, the words muffled and barely there. Merlin heard them though, held his breath to be sure that he didn't miss anything. "I thought it would be better—easier—if I could just forget about it like you had. I thought it would hurt less that way, for both of us. But I couldn't, and I can't. No matter how much it hurt, I can't forget about us."

"Us?" Merlin breathed out, hardly daring to believe the implication. "We were—Before, we were—?"

Arthur nodded, his hair tickling softly against Merlin's jaw and sending a pleasant shiver through him. "Just for a month," he said. "We didn't tell anyone. We kept it to ourselves because we knew our friends would tease us for it." He chuckled weakly, tightening the hold he had on Merlin's waist. "It was something just for us, our secret, and that was fine. But then the whole thing with Mordred and the grimoire happened—"

The warm, exultant feeling in Merlin's chest went cold, doused by remembered anger, the echo of bitterness, new shame, but Arthur didn't stop to acknowledge the noise of distress that made its way out of Merlin's mouth.

"It was bad enough that you had always been hiding the magic from me," Arthur said in a rush, like if he didn't say it now then he never would, "and I could understand that, honestly I could. But you were so close with Mordred suddenly and you wouldn't talk to me about anything anymore and I _knew_ you were lying but didn't know why. And now I find that you had this entire other life that I knew nothing about—that you refused to tell me about—"

"Arthur, I—"

" _Arthur, the nature our relationship has nothing to do with why I kept it a secret," Merlin said for what felt like the hundredth time, but his words fell on deaf ears._

" _It has everything to do with it!" Arthur insisted, as red-faced and angry now as he had been every time they'd argued over this: three days' worth of harsh words from the both of them, jibes and accusations and the sort of hurt-borne low blows that could only come from two people who knew each other well._

 _And maybe Arthur had reason to feel hurt but Merlin wasn't going to compromise on this, not when he had Borden's voice in his ear telling him that he should never accept less than exactly what he was owed, Morgause's telling him that those who looked down upon magic were never to be trusted under any circumstance, Alvarr's telling him to always stand his ground and fight for what he believed in. If Arthur couldn't understand this, couldn't accept him as he was, then Merlin didn't need him. He had other friends now, other people he could turn to, other people who lov—_

" _I'm your boyfriend, Merlin," Arthur said, his voice strangely hard and unforgiving for what should have been a tender thing to say. "You're supposed to trust me with every part of yourself, and yet you go out of your way to hide a fundamental part of who you are, who you've always been. How could you do that? How could you justify it to yourself?"_

 _Merlin had to try one more time to make him understand. For all that Merlin hated the way he was reacting, for all his resentment and hurt, he still didn't want to lose Arthur entirely, not like this, not if he didn't have to. He reached out a hand, hoping against hope that it would be enough this time. "Arthur, it was never like—"_

" _How could you let me_ say _it, Merlin?" Arthur shouted, anguish and betrayal in every line of his face as he slapped Merlin's proffered hand away. "How could you let me say that I loved you? How can I love you when I don't even_ know _you?"_

Merlin wrapped his arms around Arthur tight enough that it was probably painful. "I'm sorry," he said, voice small and choked with tears. "Arthur, I'm so sorry. I should never have kept any of this from you. I should have trusted you. Gods, I fucked up so bad. I made so many mistakes and now you're the one who's paying for them."

Arthur hugged him back just as tight, hands fisted in the small of Merlin's back to pull him closer. "I tried to stay mad," he whispered, "but I missed you. God, I missed you, Merlin."

"I'm right here," Merlin said, carding his fingers through the soft hair at the nape of Arthur's neck and feeling him shiver. "I'm here, Arthur, and I'll never hide anything from you again, I promise. I will always—"

Merlin's head snapped up, his eyes drawn unerringly down the path the way they'd come. Arthur pulled away, following his gaze and then looking back at him with a concerned frown. "What is it?"

"Someone's coming," Merlin said. It was just a brush of magic against his own. It was familiar now that he knew to feel for it, but he couldn't place it, couldn't determine who wielded it or even if they were friend or foe. He gripped onto Arthur's forearm and started towing him down the path in the opposite direction, toward the center of the maze. "Come on, we need to hurry."

"Wait," Arthur said, pulling his arm free. He took Merlin's hand in his instead and Merlin's heart stuttered at how easily their fingers tangled together. "I can't let you go into a fight without saying this. I need to say it one more time."

Merlin swallowed hard against the lump in his throat and nodded.

Arthur took a deep breath, a small smile tugging at his lips as he look at their joined hands. Then he looked up, met Merlin's eyes directly, and said, "I love you."

He let out a laugh, light and relieved, and tugged at Merlin's hand to bring him closer. Merlin went willingly, too stunned and overwhelmed to do anything else.

"Even with all the shite that's happened in the last few months, the secrets and the lies. I don't care about any of that anymore," Arthur said. He brought Merlin's hand up to his lips, pressed a kiss against the back of it. "I love you, Merlin," he said again. "Magic and all."

Fuck if that didn't make Merlin's heart skip a beat in his chest. He opened his mouth to say something—he wasn't sure what, just something, anything to make sure Arthur didn't let go of his hand—but another brush of foreign magic gave him only a second of warning before someone was rounding the nearest corner.

Morgana didn't look surprised to see them there. In fact, she let out what might have been a sigh of relief and then stalked toward them, practically radiating fury.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she demanded, stopping just short of them. "You shouldn't be here!"

"What are _you_ doing here?" Merlin shot back, letting go of Arthur's hand with great reluctance; better to have them both unhindered, and he hated that he was thinking of Morgana as a threat.

"And how did you know _we_ would be here?" Arthur asked. He crossed his arms tightly over his chest, a fierce scowl on his face. He looked angry again, but this time Merlin couldn't tell if it was a shield for fear or hurt, or if he really was just pissed off.

Morgana gave him a withering look, which didn't have much effect; those two had been trading withering looks since they were in nappies. "I was looking for Uther and found his gunlocker open. You have no reason to need a gun unless you're helping Merlin, and where else would he go expecting to shoot people?" She turned her glare on Merlin. "You can't do this."

Merlin straightened his stance, moving instinctively to stand between her and Arthur. "Like hell I can't."

"How can you oppose her now?" Morgana asked, looking honestly frustrated. "You know how it is for us out there, Merlin. How dangerous it is just to exist. Nimueh is fighting for our right to live freely, so that we can be ourselves. You used to think that was worth fighting for too."

"It is," Merlin said, an ache blooming in his chest at just how much he _wanted_ to fight for that. That wanting was what had dragged him into this madness to start with and had left him with bloody hands. He shook his head. "But this isn't the way. Nimueh is out of control, all of her people are. They're doing more harm than good this way. They need to be stopped."

"You'll destroy everything we've worked for," Morgana said, flicking her long hair over her shoulder. "All the progress we've made for magical rights, all we're set to do in the future."

 _Nimueh's hand was cool on top of his, guiding him. "Cast your mind out, let your magic carry it," she said, low and soothing. "Focus on what you wish to see, and only that, and the crystal will provide." Her hand disappeared and Merlin was left reeling under the influx of images, blurry and half-formed and uncertain, until something resolved on the crystal's surface in sharp clarity: the true future. Merlin frowned down at the picture before him even as Nimueh said, "Well done, Merlin."_

"A better future cannot be bought with blood," Merlin snapped, his eyes screwed shut against the memory and his fingernails digging into his palms as he fought to keep his magic from boiling over; the stew of magic all around him had him feeling super-charged, exposed like a live wire.

"If the blood of a few will buy the freedom of us all, then so be it," Morgana declared, head held high and righteousness in every line of her face, though she avoided looking at her brother.

"Even if that blood is your father's?"

Merlin heard Arthur's sharp intake of breath, but he didn't look away from Morgana's face. She had always been pale, but now what little color had rested high on her cheeks drained away and her mouth fell open. It snapped closed a moment later, her jaw clenching and brow furrowing sharply. In the face of Merlin's unwavering stare, she took half a step back before catching herself.

"What?" she asked, hoarse and uncertain.

Merlin let out a broken huff of laughter. "Uther is one of the biggest proponents for anti-magic regulation in the country," he said. "He's been passing legislation chipping away at sorcerer's rights for almost two decades. You really didn't think he'd be top of her list?"

Morgana was already shaking her head. "No, they never said anything about hurting Uther," she said. "Force him out of office, ruin his reputation and his prospects, but not—"

"Nimueh wants him dead," Merlin said, blunt and inescapable. "Him and a dozen others. She's going to kill them all, and I have to stop her."

Morgana tossed her hair again and her eyes sparked with furious gold. " _You're_ one to talk about _not_ killing people, Merlin," she said and her voice cracked. "Tell that to Morgause. Oh, wait! You can't, because she's dead. You murdered her!"

Merlin reeled backward, the sense memory of Morgause's chest caving in under his palm making his stomach heave and the smell of smoke and blood rising up to clog his nostrils. But Arthur's hand was on his shoulder, holding him steady, and he swallowed down the bile.

"I had to," he said, only Arthur's presence at his back giving him the strength to say it in the face of Morgana's grief and rage. "I had no choice."

"Of course you had a choice. She was my friend, Merlin!" Morgana shouted.

"It was kill or be killed!" Merlin shouted back. He felt dizzy, and not just from the emotional maelstrom. The thick soup of magic in the air was churning around them, rising and falling like waves on the ocean, and he didn't know if it was because of them or because of Mordred and the crystal. He needed to get to the center of the maze, needed to put an end to this.

"She wasn't going to kill you, Merlin," Morgana sneered. "She was just going to wipe your mind again, take away the memories you'd regained so you couldn't interfere."

"Is that what they told you?" Merlin asked. "Is that what _Nimueh_ told you? Just like she told you about her other plans, right? About targeting your father?"

"You're _lying_." Morgana was shaking now, her hands clenching into fists to try and keep control of her magic, but Merlin could feel the way it was straining against her hold. Small gusts of wind were picking up around her, making her hair fly into her face, and her eyes were flashing at random. Even with her magic wild and out of her control, Morgana somehow looked smaller than Merlin ever remembered, like she was shrinking in on herself. For all her righteous fury, she didn't sound certain when she said, "You're a traitor to the cause and you just want to stop Nimueh from doing what needs to be done."

Merlin shifted into a ready stance, nudging Arthur further behind him. "I told you once before that I wouldn't let you stand in my way," he said, his voice low and hard; he couldn't let himself be dissuaded, not even in the face of a friend in distress. "I don't want to hurt you, Morgana, but I still stand by that now."

Merlin felt the energy begin to ripple through the air before the attack had even left Morgana's hand. It was no elegant strike, just a burst of magic thrown in his direction, and Merlin threw up a shield to counter it without trouble. The spell shattered and Merlin had a blast of his own at the ready as soon as it had dissipated, lobbing it overhand. Morgana dodged and lashed out again, wild and unrestrained.

Again, Merlin saw it coming long before it connected; Borden had always warned her against telegraphing her punches, so to speak, but it was a lesson she hadn't learned. Morgana was possessed of great strength, but she still lacked the finesse and control that came to Merlin so naturally. She was a whirlwind, impulsive and reckless.

Merlin's next attack caught her in the chest just as she was readying a fireball in her hand. She was flung backwards and hit the ground hard, rolling to a stop at the far end of the path. Arthur called her name in a panic, pushing past Merlin to kneel at her side and roll her over. Merlin joined him there, thinking again of Morgause's still body even though he knew he hadn't put nearly as much force behind this spell as he had that one.

Morgana was breathing, her chest rising and falling steadily, and Arthur's fumbling fingers found a steady pulse in her neck. Merlin breathed a shaky sigh of relief; this wasn't any worse than the many times either of them had been knocked out sparring and she would be fine soon enough. He stood and backed away, turning down the path toward the heart of the maze, intent on leaving Arthur to look after his sister, but Arthur's voice stopped him.

"Is she really targeting my father?"

Merlin considered lying, telling Arthur that he had only said that to get under Morgana's skin, saying something to make Arthur stay back here where it was safer. But he had sworn to himself that he would never lie to Arthur again. "Yes."

There was the click and slide of metal against metal, and then Arthur was at his side with the gun ready in his hand. "Let's go."


	9. Chapter 9

The center of the maze was a large open field where all the paths converged, a grassy expanse dotted with topiaries and decorative benches. When the maze had been a tourist attraction, people had come to lounge on those benches, appreciate the scenery, mill around in the sunlight. But there were no tourists now. Instead there was a dais dead in the center of the clearing, a few stairs leading up to a small platform. And on that platform was a crystal displayed on a cushioned pedestal like in a museum.

They couldn't get a good look at the crystal itself, not at this distance and not when it was lit up like a beacon. It was bright enough to make them squint, throwing twisted shadows from the leafy sculptures to dance along the maze walls. It might have been enough to obscure the person standing behind it if he hadn't been lit up just as brightly himself.

The glow engulfed Mordred from head to toe, brightest where both hands were laid upon the crystal's surface, giving him an aura that seemed to throb to some unheard heartbeat. Mordred's eyes were a solid gold, magic shining out so strongly that it cut through the blue-white glare like a scythe. He wasn't blinking, eyes fixed unseeingly somewhere over their heads.

The closer they got, the more obvious it was that something was very wrong. Mordred didn't notice their approach at all, didn't so much as twitch in their direction even when Merlin called his name. He was a ghastly white, skin looking thin enough to see his veins; he looked half dead, like the crystal was draining him, though Merlin knew it was more likely that it was filling him with so much magic that there was no room left for _him_.

"What's wrong with him?" Arthur asked, low and horrified. He reached out like he might touch Mordred's leg, shining as brightly as the rest of him, and Merlin snatched his hand back.

"Don't!" he barked. "Don't touch. With the amount of pure magic that thing is emitting, it would kill you in a second. You're not built to handle that."

"Is that what it's doing to him?"

Merlin released Arthur's hand and stepped closer, mounting the dais and leaning cautiously over the pedestal. Images flashed so quickly over the flat, clear surface of the crystal that he couldn't make anything out. It was dizzying, enough to make him feel seasick on dry land, and he was only watching from a distance, not immersed in it like Mordred. "He's lost," Merlin told Arthur. "He's lost in the possible future. He doesn't have the strength to control what he sees, so he's seeing everything, all of it at once."

"That can't be healthy."

"It's not." Merlin reached for Mordred's hands himself; breaking the connection when he was this deeply imbedded would be dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as leaving him as he was to be burned out completely.

"Well, well, Merlin."

Merlin heard the click of Arthur cocking his gun and turned to see the barrel already leveled at Nimueh. She was every bit as beautiful and imposing as he remembered, and he did remember now. He could feel the last vestiges of the barrier in his mind dissolving as the magic of the crystal reached out to him, washing over and through him. He pulled his hand away from it, away from the lure that Mordred had succumbed to, and shook his head to clear it.

Nimueh smiled at him from where she was pacing leisurely around the dais, completely unconcerned with the gun pointed at her chest with steady hands.

"I can't say I'm surprised to find you here," she said. "I'll admit, I was skeptical when word first reached me that you were beginning to remember. I thought, surely, no one would be able to overcome a curse of that magnitude. But I knew that if anyone could manage such a feat, it would be you. You are and have always been something truly special, Merlin."

A shudder overtook Merlin as those unnaturally blue eyes stayed fixed unblinkingly on him. He wondered why it had taken him so long to see the hunger there, the calculating greed whenever she looked at him. He could feel it like a physical weight now, stifling and impossible to ignore.

"If you keep using Mordred like this, you're going to kill him," he said, hoping that his voice would remain steady despite the fine tremor in his hands. He clenched them into fists at his sides. "You said yourself that he's not strong enough for this."

Nimueh frowned at him then and it managed to look scolding. "Well, it _was_ supposed to be you," she reminded him. She was still circling and Merlin had to turn to keep her in his sight, inching around the small platform in an effort to keep himself between her and Mordred's back as if that would somehow protect him. "You took to the crystal as a bird to flight," she said, that ever-present smirk creeping back onto her face. "It was an amazing thing to witness. I could have taught you so much more, Merlin. We could have done great things together. We could have ruled the world, the two of us."

"I don't want that," Merlin snapped.

The faux-imploring look on Nimeuh's face, designed to charm him again as he had been charmed in the beginning, gave way to a flash of real irritation, just for a moment before it smoothed out, cool and haughty and controlled once more.

"Yes, I have gotten that impression lately," she said. "And so I was left with young Mordred. You're right in that he isn't really built for this work, and I would never have pushed him this far, but you left me with no choice. There is information I need, and he can get it for me."

"At the cost of his life."

"That is on your head," Nimueh said sharply, eyes flashing. "If you had not betrayed me then Mordred's sacrifice would not be necessary."

"I will not be party to a coup!" Merlin shouted.

"A revolution," Nimueh countered.

"The synchronized assassinations of seventeen government officials and politicians across the country," Merlin said, every word only serving to solidify his resolve. "All of it made possible by the crystal showing you exactly where each of them will be ahead of time, and with people of your own choosing already maneuvered into position and ready to take their places before the dust even settles. You'll replace every key player on the board with a radical magical supremacist, all in one night, and it will only lead to ruin. It will tear the entire country apart!"

"So that we can rebuild it," Nimueh said with all the fervour of a true believer, a zealot, as she advanced upon him. " _We_ , Merlin, _we_ are the elite! We who have been slaughtered and persecuted. We who have the power of the gods themselves running through our veins. We deserve to _rule_."

A buzz of foreign magic had Merlin looking to the edges of the clearing, the entrances to the maze. Alvarr, Borden, and Edwin were all there, creeping closer. Arthur had noticed them too and shifted his focus. He had backed himself up against the dais, but he didn't seem to know who to point his only weapon at first, who was the biggest threat. His hands were still steady though, even as his eyes roved nervously and sweat beaded at his temples.

"I'll give you one last chance, Merlin," Nimueh said magnanimously, but her power was already pooling in her hands; even before she asked the question, she knew what his answer would be. "Join us. Be a part of the glorious new world I will build for our kind."

Merlin grit his teeth, his magic roaring through him like a wildfire and burning away the last of his doubt. " _Never_."

The first blow was stronger than anything he had experienced in his training, but the shield he threw up in front of himself held. Before he did anything else, Merlin let his magic flood out to surround Arthur, sinking it down into the magic-rich earth beneath them to make sure the shield stayed steady even when he wasn't focused on maintaining it. Arthur didn't even flinch at his sudden immersion, just aimed his gun at Alvarr and took his first shot. With Arthur as safe as he could make him, Merlin turned his focus to Nimueh.

It was nothing like sparring with Alvarr and the others. That had been slower, methodical and educational, broken down move by move and analyzed for ways to improve. It wasn't even like fighting Morgause in the alleyway, when every second had been fear-bright and panic-quick, a muddled mess of confusion and reflex. But this.

This almost felt like a dance. Where Alvarr had been all tradition and perfect form, Borden all brute force and brashness, Edwin all slick misdirection, Morgause all razor-sharp precision, instead Nimueh was grace and elegance. Every attack flowed from the last, seamless and without the slightest hesitation. Merlin matched her move for move, words of the Ancient Language coming easily to his lips, the motions comfortable and familiar now.

He remembered Edwin teaching him to feel the energy within his body and direct its path with purpose, and he channelled it now into grounding his shield and shoring up its weak spots against Nimueh's onslaught. He remembered Morgause teaching him to manipulate fire without getting burned, and he wrapped himself in a cloak of flames as Nimueh sent shards of ice flying toward him like daggers. He remembered Nimueh herself teaching him to harness another's power and use it for his own, and he took hold of the lethal conjuration of shadow she unleashed upon him and flung it toward her henchmen instead, sending them running.

The bang-flash of gunfire reached him over the tumult, steady shots as Arthur took careful aim at the men circling around him. Thanks to Merlin's shield, they couldn't get close enough to do him harm directly, but the shield wouldn't last long with all three of them hammering at it and Merlin's attention divided. Borden had red dripping down his shoulder, but Edwin was muttering over the wound, healing it, and Merlin knew it wouldn't be long til they were both back in the fray.

Merlin paid for his lapse in concentration when he was forced to duck behind the crystal's plinth to avoid a particularly nasty curse of Nimueh's, one he didn't recognize and couldn't counter. By the time he looked back, Arthur was struggling to stay upright on ground that bucked and buckled beneath his feet, quaking at Alvarr's behest. Merlin sent a quick blast toward Alvarr to break his concentration and give Arthur a chance to regain his footing just as a similar blast came roaring toward him from Nimueh. With an entirely non-magical curse, Merlin refocused on her, throwing himself down and to the side to avoid it and nearly careening off the small dais.

Someone called Arthur's name, but it wasn't him.

Morgana came skidding into the clearing, her hand flying to her mouth as she took in the sight. She seemed frozen to the spot in disbelief even as spells flew before her eyes, even as Merlin got barely clipped by a jinx and let out a shout of pain, even as a wayward spell burned a hole through the hedge to her right. It was another shot from Arthur's gun that finally broke her from her reverie, and the subsequent cry as a gnarled root sprouted from the ground at Arthur's feet to grab hold of his leg. Immediately she was sending a volley of spells at Borden, forcing him back and out of range, fighting her way toward her brother with a single-minded ferocity.

Heaving a sigh of relief, Merlin let the shield he had wrapped around Arthur drop, pleased when it was quickly replaced by one of Morgana's making. No matter their ideological disagreements, Morgana would always protect her brother. With the Pendragon siblings back to back and holding their own, Merlin was free to devote all of his attention to Nimueh.

It wasn't enough. Arthur had been right to say that there was more to fighting than brute strength. It wasn't that he was outmatched, per se, he just couldn't get an _edge_. For all of Merlin's raw power, for all his innate control and good instincts, the fact remained that there were a vast number of spells he simply didn't know how to combat. Merlin didn't even know what many of the curses Nimueh was throwing at him would _do_ if he let them connect, and he very much did not want to find out. He was reduced to ducking and dodging and praying a shield would suffice, lobbing back the strongest of his limited repertoire of combative spells at every opportunity, but it was only a matter of time before she got one over on him and that time would probably come sooner rather than later. He could only hold out for so long like this.

Arthur called his name. When Merlin got a chance to look safely, he saw that Arthur was pointing somewhere behind him, urgent and alarmed. One glance was enough to have Merlin mirroring his expression.

Mordred was convulsing, jerking and twitching like he was being electrocuted, though his hands stayed glued to the crystal's surface. There was blood dripping from both his nostrils, looking almost black amidst the brightness still emanating as strongly as ever from every bit of his skin, and Merlin was sure that had his eyes not been a solid indistinguishable wash of gold, they would have been rolling back into his head.

Merlin fired one more blast at Nimueh, a strong one meant to earn him a few precious seconds of leeway, and then he flung himself at Mordred.

Everything exploded.

Not literally, but it certainly seemed that way to Merlin. He barely felt the physical collision, the force of his body knocking Mordred away from the crystal and off the dais entirely where he slumped to the ground, still seizing. He hardly noticed the way Arthur and Morgana closed ranks around him, the former rolling him onto his side and the latter keeping Alvarr and Borden at bay; Edwin was on the ground some metres away, bloody and unmoving. He was only distantly aware of a scream, a high-pitched feminine shriek of rage that made the magic in the clearing surge and roil with its fury.

No, all Merlin was truly aware of was _power_. It wrapped around him like the silken tentacles of some great monster, but it was anything but frightening. He drew the magic around him like armour and let it sink into him, chasing his blood through his veins and leaching inward, filling all the dark places in his soul with light and heat. Every cell felt flayed open and raw, assaulted and soothed at once with each crashing wave of magic the crystal released.

His hands found their way to the smooth plane that Mordred's had vacated, landing there without his direction. It was like he had been thrown into a maelstrom of sensory information, none of it his but demanding his attention nonetheless. A cacophony of voices, some vague murmurs and some as clear as bells. Images, places and faces he didn't know, a constant influx, a stream of visions as never-ending as time itself.

He could lose himself in this. If he let it, the storm could drag him down and bury him like it had Mordred, could subsume him until he no longer existed as a separate entity, only as a conduit for the immensity of his magic. But one voice among the tumult came to him, sharp and immediate like the rest were not. The near future; an imminent threat.

" _Færcwealm forsíeðe úre bræde!_ "

"Færcwealm forsíeðe úre bræde!"

It was like an echo, only the echo came first, ringing right in his ear as if from a distance, though he heard it quite plainly. There were two Nimuehs before him, one a pale imitation that moved just a second before the reality of the other. By the time the wave of sickly green flames had left Nimueh's hand, Merlin already knew the trajectory it would follow, the way it would stick to his skin like Greek fire if he let it, the way it would burn like acid and she would laugh in triumph. Instead he was ready to meet it with flames of his own and the spells ricocheted, shooting off at angles, scorching the maze walls and leaving them smouldering.

Nimueh swung around to fling another spell and Merlin saw in his mind's eye the way it would slice into his flesh if he gave it the chance. He stepped easily aside and let it pass him by to cut a topiary into pieces, following with a hex of his own aimed at exactly the spot where he _knew_ she would be. His spell caught her in the shoulder and sent her careening backward with a cry that was borne more of shock and surprise than of actual pain, even as blood bloomed beneath her fingers.

 _She snarled, eyes flooding with gold and a glimmering power coalescing in her other hand as she raised it toward him. The blast roared toward him and found his stomach, ripping, tear through him in a spray of blood and viscera as if he were nothing more than tissue paper._

She snarled, eyes flooding with gold and a glimmering power coalescing in her other hand as she raised it toward him. The blast roared toward him and—

—met a wall of Merlin's own magic long before it reached its goal. It crawled along the surface of the shield, seeking the slightest crack to dig into and exploit, but as it pressed forward Merlin _pulled_ , pulled it toward him and wrested control of it. As it gave way, he turned it around and flung it toward Borden, who dove sideways and right into the path of Arthur's next bullet.

Merlin blasted Nimueh off her feet before her next curse could form on her lips. He saw the way she would rally, would call on higher powers than he knew to strike him down, and knew that he couldn't give her the chance. He pressed both his palms flush against the stone, letting it fuel and strengthen him, and reached into the depths of his own power, into the darkest corners of himself that were now set ablaze.

The skies rumbled in response, dark clouds blossoming above him to blot out what was left of the evening's light. Darkness fell around them all but it wasn't enough to douse the glow of power that pulsed brighter than ever, flaring around him, swelling with every throb of its own heartbeat. The charge of it built and built until it coalesced into a pure elemental manifestation, a jagged bolt of lightning splitting the heavens in two and racing downward, following the path Merlin set for it.

It struck Nimueh square, blasting through her feeble attempts to block or redirect it, and there was a long second where she was suspended, splayed out and flayed open as the current rushed through her body, and then she was gone. Left in her place was a pile of smoking ash and an echo of a scream.


	10. Chapter 10

It took all of Merlin's flagging strength to wrench himself free from the crystal, from the renewed avalanche of potential futures. The effort sent him tumbling and he landed flat on his back on the ground behind the dais. He didn't feel the impact. Suddenly bereft of the crystal's influence, it was like he had been struck blind, deaf, and dumb, all his senses shut down or maybe burned out.

He didn't know how long it lasted, floating in silent darkness that was equally soothing and stifling. Eventually awareness began to creep over him again like the prickle of a sleeping limb coming awake: just a low buzz of feeling, a vague hum of sound, the pale glow of soft light through closed eyelids. His entire body ached, every inch of it, like he had been dropped off a building instead of a platform maybe a metre high, and he was certain by now that his head would hurt for the rest of his life and on into the next.

And then relief was washing over him, a cool flush of foreign magic that dampened the pounding in his skull and left him limp and loose in a way he hadn't been in months. There were hands on him, small and warm, brushing over his face and down his chest in a manner that somehow didn't feel threatening or invasive at all. He struggled to press through the heaviness that had filled his extremities; he had left behind something important, he thought, something that he needed to get back to.

Everything was dim and indistinct when he managed to pry his eyelids apart, though each blink brought things into clearer focus. The hands on him belonged to an old woman who looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn't place her. She had a kindly face that was set in a small frown as she knelt beside him, looking him over with an air of clinical efficiency. When she caught his eye, she turned over her shoulder and called out to someone—his hearing wasn't back up to snuff yet, still muffled and cotton-y, so he couldn't make out who—before leaning in close.

"Welcome back," she said. "Can you hear me? Can you tell me who you are?"

Up this close he could hear her just fine, and for the first time in a long time the loud voice didn't grate on him. He tried to answer her question. "'m Merl'n." It came out slurred, his tongue sluggish and slow to respond, but the woman seemed satisfied with it.

"Do you know where you are, Merlin?" she asked.

It took a moment for that information to come back to him through the haze he was still floating in, but it came like a shock. Like lightning.

His attempt at sitting bolt upright didn't go very well. He didn't manage to leave the ground and the thwarted effort left him feeling decidedly queasy. There were other hands on him then, more familiar ones that brushed through his hair and soothed him. Merlin turned toward those hands and they obligingly helped him upward until he was mostly vertical and propped against a solid chest—Arthur's chest.

"Nimueh," Merlin said, casting his gaze around the clearing; he knew what he _thought_ had happened, what he had _seen_ happen, but his sight had been overlaid by so many potential outcomes at the time that he couldn't be sure, needed confirmation of the reality of it.

"Sh, Merlin," Arthur said, one hand rubbing at his arm and the other a steady weight on his stomach, holding him close. "It's alright, it's over. She's gone."

"She's dead?"

"Extremely."

Merlin slumped back against him in relief. A small part of him rose up to remind him that he had just killed someone— _another_ someone, even—and that he shouldn't be feeling relief over that. He should be horrified, that part said, terrified at how easily he had done it, how readily such a dangerous magic had leapt to his fingertips. But he couldn't feel that way, not right now, not when Nimueh had already caused so much harm and had posed such a threat to so many. Though he regretted the necessity, and that he had had to be the one to commit the act, he couldn't regret that Nimueh was dead. The world would be a better place for it.

"And the others?" he asked. The henchmen, Nimueh's seconds-in-command, the ones who could take up the mantle and keep the Knights of Medhir going in her absence. Edwin had been unmoving when last Merlin had had the chance to check the progress of the battle, downed by one of Arthur's bullets but not necessarily dead, but the others had still been fighting. There was no more fighting now though, no _crackle-whoosh_ of spells overhead, no flash of muzzle fire, just the normal muffled dullness of the maze itself.

"Also dead."

There was a hitch in Arthur's voice when he spoke even as the words themselves were matter-of-fact, and the hand resting on Merlin's stomach clenched into a fist, gripping at his shirt. Merlin finally struggled into a proper upright position, but the hand didn't release its hold and Merlin didn't move to dislodge it just yet. Arthur was pale, almost grey in the face, and his eyes were red and strangely distant, like he wasn't really looking at Merlin at all. There was blood splattered across his chest and, judging by the lack of visible injuries on his person, it hadn't come from him.

Merlin prised Arthur's fingers open and laced them through his own instead. Arthur held on with punishing strength, making the bones in Merlin's hand creak, but Merlin welcomed it; after the unreality of being immersed in the ephemeral and ever-shifting future, it was grounding, a comforting reminder of the here and now.

A distinct and very familiar throat-clearing came from over Merlin's shoulder and he turned to find Gaius, his permanently raised eyebrow for once broadcasting concern instead of judgment.

"Gaius," Merlin said, disbelieving.

"Merlin, my boy."

And then Merlin was clambering clumsily to his feet and falling into his great-uncle's arms. The hug was just as warm and all-encompassing as Gaius' hugs had always been, tight enough to make him feel safe in a threatening world. Merlin tightened his hold, knowing that, if his arms didn't still feel like they were made of wet clay, he would probably be hurting the old man.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, the question muffled in Gaius' fuzzy jumper. "And why did you come? How did you even know where to find me?"

"Why?" Gaius scoffed. He pulled back to take Merlin by the shoulders and _there_ was the judgement, right on cue. "I helped raise you, boy. You think I don't know when you're lying to me?"

Merlin flushed, cringing under the force of the Eyebrow.

"That phone call was alarming enough in its bare-bone content," Gaius continued, "but add in that shifty tone of yours and I knew you were in trouble. You needed my help, so here I am."

The warmth that spread through Merlin from head to toe took him by surprise, the rush of sheer relief that came with knowing Gaius would always be on his side. Even if they were arguing, even if they disagreed, even if they fell out and moved halfway across the country, Gaius would still drop everything to come to his rescue.

"But how?"

Gaius smiled, a smug and almost mischievous look overtaking the stern disapproval. "I may not practice anymore myself, but that doesn't mean I don't have a few friends willing to whip up a tracking spell for me on short notice."

Merlin looked back at the old woman, still smiling at him warmly despite the less than pleasant situation, and finally put a name to the face; she was Alice, an old flame of Gaius' and also a very talented healer and sorceress in her own right.

Now that he looked around with clearer eyes, he saw that Alice wasn't the only person Gaius had brought with him. There were two younger men as well, one with wide, close-set eyes and a ring that glowed with power, and one that didn't look much older than Merlin himself but worked spells alongside the other with confidence that spoke of more training than Merlin had ever had. The two of them were standing over the bodies of Alvarr, Edwin, and Borden, all moved off to the side now, and they were chanting. Merlin couldn't hear what they were doing from this distance, but the lurching of his stomach when he laid eyes on the bodies meant he wasn't too inclined toward getting any closer to find out.

Gaius' hand on his shoulder pulled him around, dragging the bodies out of his line of sight. "You needn't worry about them anymore," he said. "You've done more than enough, Merlin. The battle is won and your part in this is over."

"Over," Merlin said, barely more than a breath. The word echoed in his head as if, maybe, if he repeated it enough times, it might sink in. Over, done with, ended and gone. It was over and he was safe. Gaius would take care of everything from here and he could go home.

Even that knowledge couldn't quite dispel the lingering coldness in his stomach, the aftertaste of fear on the back of his tongue. He wondered how long it would take. His eyes fell on Arthur, shaken and pale, and knew that it would take time, a lot of it, for any of them to feel truly safe again. Morgana was at Arthur's side, clutching at her brother's arm and stoically ignoring the tear tracks on her own face, the both of them hovering over Mordred's still form as Alice examined him. None of them seemed panicked or distraught, so Merlin thought it safe to assume that the boy was at least alive.

The Pendragon siblings didn't look up immediately when Merlin approached. His presence seemed to reach them slowly through the haze of shock they'd all fallen into. Arthur was the first to react, pulling away from Morgana to wrap Merlin in his arms. Merlin sunk into the embrace gratefully. This close, he could feel the fine tremors wracking Arthur's body, worse than his own. He held on tighter.

"I'm so glad you're okay," he whispered into Arthur's hair, a thrill of irrational fear running through him even though the danger had passed; he had almost _lost_ Arthur. He had put Arthur in danger, dragged him into this and put a target on his back. He was the reason that—

"Stop that."

Merlin actually laughed. Just a short burst of it, catching them all by surprise, but he couldn't help it. He pulled back with a sniffle and wiped the new tears from his face with his sleeve.

"Stop what?"

"Thinking it's your fault," Arthur said with an admirable attempt at his usual haughty, knowing expression. Merlin started to deny it but Arthur just shook his head. "I know you too well for that, Merls. Don't be an idiot, not now. I asked to come along. _Insisted_ on it, actually. So stop blaming yourself for what I volunteered to do."

There was blood on Arthur's hands. Literal blood crusted into the lines of his palm, the same sort Merlin had had earlier in the day—and had it really only been a few hours ago that he had left that destroyed alleyway?—and he knew how long it would take to scrub off, how long the water would run pink, how much longer it would take to stop feeling it there. He took the hand in his, traced his fingertips over the stained skin.

"I'm still sorry," he said. "You shouldn't have had to."

The hand turned over, fingers weaving together again and holding on. "Neither should you," Arthur said. "And it's no more my fault than it was yours." There was a strained smile on his face when Merlin looked up, tight and unhappy but better than the disconcerting blankness from earlier. "Kill or be killed, right?"

Merlin nodded, slowly at first and then more firmly. "Right."

Arthur's smile wavered and disappeared, his face crumpling into something small and devastated as he dragged Merlin back into his embrace and echoed Merlin's own thoughts: "God, I could have lost you."

They stayed that way for a long time, just holding each other close, breathing each other in and revelling in the warmth that meant they were both alive and whole. The familiarity of it still caught Merlin off guard, the remembered intimacy after weeks of distance and ignorance. The hole in his mind was gone, the scooped out places filled in again and smoothed over. But he could feel the scars, the way those memories had been shifted around and relocated, everything just a tinge different. They were there, though, and he almost cried against just for the sake of feeling _whole_ in a way that he hadn't in so long.

Eventually he became aware of a presence at his shoulder, a tingling of familiar magic that no longer felt like a threat to him. Merlin made himself draw away from Arthur—more difficult than he wanted to admit—and turned to find Morgana there. Her normally pristine hair was a mess of tangles and her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, distant in much the same way as Arthur's had been. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle like she could hold herself together by sheer force of will and her bottom lip trembled when she finally brought herself to meet Merlin's eye directly.

"Merlin," she said, and her voice shook.

That was all it took. Merlin's last bit of resistance crumbled and he opened his arms to her. He stumbled a bit when she flung herself into them, not entirely steady on his feet yet, but he didn't complain. He just held her tighter as sobs wracked her slight frame and tears wet his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she stammered. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—I never wanted anything like this! I swear, I didn't—"

"Sh, Morgana, I know," Merlin said, petting her hair.

And he did know. He remembered now what they had been told, what they'd been promised since the beginning. He remembered how desperate Morgana had been for companionship, how very lonely and alienated she had been, how much joy she had taken in finding people who were like her. Merlin at least had a mother and uncle who knew and supported him, but Morgana had never had that. Instead she had Uther, who actively campaigned against her kind, who spat on the very idea of them, and an oblivious brother she hadn't felt she could trust. The promise of a family, a society of like-minded individuals who would shelter and bolster her, was more than enough to lure her in and keep her.

"I never thought she would do something like this," Morgana said, shaking her head in denial even as she kept her face buried in Merlin's shoulder. "She never said anything about—about Uther or—or so many others, I didn't think she would actually—"

She was lost in tears again, and Merlin was struck again by the fact that she _knew_ these people. Morgana had been involved with them before Merlin had, had already been a part of the organization by the time Merlin joined. She had idolized Nimueh, had spent months training with Alvarr, had looked to Morgause as a big sister. And now they were all dead. Knowing how the fight had been going, Merlin had to wonder if Morgana hadn't taken a life tonight as well, a life she had known.

"They would have killed my brother," Morgana said, shaky and quiet enough that Merlin almost missed it, muffled as it was. "They would've killed an innocent boy. He had nothing to do with this, and they would've—"

"He's alright," Merlin said quickly. "He's fine, Morgana, he's right here. We're all safe, even Mordred."

Alice nodded at him over Morgana's shoulder, her hands glowing faintly as they traced over Mordred's chest. Hopefully that meant there wouldn't be any lasting damage from his overuse of the crystal.

Morgana pulled back abruptly at his mention of Mordred, turning to look as though he might have disappeared in the time since she'd looked away. "And him!" she said, a light of anger rekindling in her eyes. "She knew what she was doing to him! He's been looking sickly for weeks, getting worse and worse. He wouldn't tell me why, just said it was stress from school, but it was _her_! She would've killed him too, thrown away his life just to further her own agenda!"

"He's going to be okay, though," Merlin said. "I promise. We'll make sure that he's okay."

Her furious expression only lasted a minute in the face of his promise, collapsing in on itself under the weight of betrayal and disillusionment. "They'd have killed my father," she whispered finally, small and hopeless and lost. "They'd have used me to get to him."

For all her hatred of Uther's attitude and policies, for all that she wanted him out of office and stripped of his influence, he was still her father, the man who had raised her and come to her violin recitals and kissed her hair when she scraped her knee. She still loved him.

Arthur was there at her side in an instant, pulling her close and murmuring soft reassurances to her. As he held her, he reached out a hand to Merlin. Merlin took it, his other hand falling to Morgana's shoulder.

"We're going to make this right," Arthur said. "Somehow, someday, we will find a way to make this right."

"How?" Morgana sniffed.

Arthur shrugged, making Morgana's head rise and fall with it and drawing a snort of annoyance from her that put a small smile back on Merlin's face. "Well, father always wanted me to go into politics," he said with studied nonchalance.

That got Morgana smiling too. It was a tiny thing, but it was there. "A politician with a cause?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"And a hell of a lot of charisma," Merlin chuckled, squeezing Arthur's hand. "You could really go places."

"So I've been told," Arthur said, a little bit smug. Then his expression sobered. "We can find a way to affect change from the inside. Without any more bloodshed. There has to be a way."

With his head held high and a light of determination shining in his sharp eyes, Merlin was struck again with exactly how regal Arthur looked. Even in a blood-splattered jumper and torn jeans he looked ready to fight and win any battle he chose. And the battle he had chosen was Merlin's, was Morgana's, was Mordred's. He would fight for them and Merlin couldn't believe he had ever doubted him in the first place.

"If anyone could find a way, it would be you," he said, and he believed it with all his heart.

Evidently Morgana did too. She lifted her head and rubbed at her face, wiping away the last traces of tears and smoothing her hair back into some semblance of order. "Well, I can't let you do all the work, can I?" she said. "There are other arenas to fight in. I was already considering practicing law; I've been told I could make the meanest barrister cry."

"I don't doubt it," Arthur said with a laugh. He tried to ruffle her hair but she caught his hand halfway there and gave him a glare that shouldn't have been half as effective as it was, all things considered. He wisely retracted the offending hand, holding it up in surrender. Morgana held onto her irritation for only a moment before it broke into another smile, this one heartbreakingly sweet with the relief of knowing her brother was on her side. She placed a swift kiss on Arthur's cheek and then hurried back to Mordred's side to avoid acknowledging his surprise at the uncharacteristically affectionate gesture.

Merlin had to laugh at his stunned expression, tugging Arthur in so that he could put another kiss on the other cheek. Arthur turned to him with a smile of his own. "What, I don't get a real kiss from you?"

"Maybe," Merlin said, sidling closer still. He bit his lip, suddenly nervous. "Are you sure you still want one?" Without the threat of death hanging over their heads. Without the danger making everything feel sharp and close and huge, eclipsing the little things that had drove them apart to begin with. With the magic and the lies and the blood all laid out plainly. With him being who he was. Did he want that?

Arthur tilted Merlin's head up with fingers under his chin, making certain that Merlin met his eyes. "More than anything." He leaned in to kiss Merlin gently, just a brush of lips so light that Merlin would hardly have felt it if it didn't send a delicious shiver all the way to his toes.

After a truly sappy moment of them smiling against each other's lips, sharing breath and reluctant to pull away, Merlin cleared his throat and took a step back, one hand staying determinedly in Arthur's and the other scratching the back of his neck. "So, er. With you as the next Prime Minister and Morgana tearing up the court system, where does that leave me?"

Arthur looked him over with that serious, shrewd expression he sometimes got while playing chess, the one that said he was planning out his strategy and was already twelve steps ahead of you. "We may have cut the head off the snake that is the Knights of Medhir," he said, "but that leaves a lot of followers behind. A lot of kids like Mordred who want justice and equality. They still need a leader, someone to rally around."

Merlin's eyebrows rose. "Me?" he asked, already shaking his head. "No, Arthur, I'm not the leader type. You are!"

Arthur rolled his eyes, tugging Merlin closer again. "Well, I can hardly give them what they need," he said.

"Neither can I," Merlin said. "They need guidance, someone to teach them. I'm just a useless kid, same as them."

"A useless kid with legendary power and all the knowledge of Time itself at his fingertips," came Morgana's rebuttal as she drew up beside him to bump her hip against his. "You've always underestimated yourself, Merlin."

"And now you've got Gaius firmly on your side again," Arthur pointed out, nodding to where the old man was barking orders at the men he'd brought with him, presiding over the erstwhile battlefield like a conductor over his orchestra. "Maybe you can talk him into sticking around. With your power, natural talent, and vision, and his knowledge and experience?" He shrugged. "Maybe you could give all these disenfranchised youths something to work toward."

Merlin stared at the earnest expression on his face, at the half-smile Morgana offered. He looked at Mordred, just starting to stir, and thought of all the others. He remembered them now, all the other teenagers he had studied and sparred with over the last few months, each of them looking for the same things he was: community, support, hope for the future. Nimueh and her ilk had taken advantage of such innocent desires and twisted them, used them to manipulate vulnerable kids into being the next generation of her own personal army. But if they had someone else to look up to, a better vision of the future to aspire to, maybe it was possible.

"It won't be easy," he said with a sigh, the scope of it already feeling like a looming shadow. "And we'll need more than just us."

"It won't be just us," Arthur said with certainty. "We can't be the only ones who feel this way. All we have to do is find them. I know Gwaine thinks the ban on magic is ludicrous, and Percy lost two cousins because of it. Leon is planning on politics foo, and I think he could be talked 'round."

"Gwen and her brother Elyan agree with us as well," Merlin said. "I know they'd be on board if we told them about it."

"We can make our own organization," Morgana declared. "A less violent one, geared toward placing sympathetic people in powerful enough positions to affect change for the next generation."

Merlin took Morgana's hand in his, squeezing. "And giving young sorcerers the type of unconditional support they deserve," he said, and she smiled at him, eyes swimming with tears.

"We can do this," Arthur said. "We can make it so the likes of Uther and Nimueh both are known to be in the wrong. With the right people at our sides, we can change the world."

With Arthur smiling at him like that, with Morgana at his side and Gaius at his back, Merlin believed it. Even with the sour chill of fear and guilt still low in his stomach and the ache of exhaustion in his bones, even with blood on his hands and bodies just out of his line of sight, he believed it. He believed in them and what they could achieve, together. It wouldn't be easy, none of it would, and it certainly wouldn't be quick. But if Nimueh Blake and her entire operation couldn't stand in their way, then nothing could, right? And with weak morning sunlight just beginning to filter into the skies, burning through the bank of dark clouds that he himself had conjured, Merlin couldn't help but think that maybe his memories of the crystal's predictions didn't do their future justice.


End file.
